The Unspoken (2015)

Fantastic!

As Good As It Gets

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

There's something wrong with the house in the woods down on Briar Lane. Years after a family disappears from the house in the '70's the boards are being pried off the windows and the doors are being unlocked as a new tenant is moving in. A young mother, Jeanie (Hutton), and her mute son have escaped the city and their traumas there. After his father passed away Adrian stopped speaking and hopefully, the change of pace and scenery will help him out of this fugue. With them comes a nurse and housekeeper, Portia (Rukiya Bernard), and from the town, they hire Angela (Ferland), a part-time confidant for Adrian. However, no sooner than they've opened the doors to the house that strange things begin to happen.I really do like this new and refreshingly well thought out take on the Haunted House subgenre of horror. The story is well structured and full of interesting characters. However, it would have been nice to have a few more scenes between Father and Daughter in respect to Angela's character as this would not only have strengthened and filled her out more but would have added a better depth to the story. It also would have added more power to climax when Angela's dad (Munro) comes to save her.The director does a wonderful job of creating the scene of a town/village which has seen better days. This is great as it adds to the believability and reality of the story. People have problems and they are doing their best to survive... everything isn't rosy. I also have to give credit for the opening sequence which throws the audience straight into the action and sets the scene, pace, and atmosphere for the rest of the movie.With all the horror films out and about that stomp over well-worn scenarios, it's refreshing to have a twist. It's also nice to have a decent director filming - all too often the direction itself is one of the major things to harm a film (contrary to belief not everyone can make a good horror film).As for the acting, it's well above par and the portrayals only add to the power of the film. One of the best is Adrian (Suljic), though he doesn't say a word, he definitely has a presence throughout the whole film.I would recommend this to all lovers of the horror genre and to those wishing to try something out of the field. It's not the best but it's a great deal better than most in the genre and well worth a viewing... or two...

Sorry folks, if you were looking for a good ghost film this is not the one. Plenty of jump scares, and gore, not a lot of actual haunting.A woman and her son move into a supposedly haunted house, and hire a babysitter. The babysitter, predictably, has some history with the house, and her dear dead mother. Some things happen etc. etc.This is a slow moving film, with an unsatisfying Ex Machina ending, and some truly on-the-noes acting.

Horrible acting all the way around. Joelle Ferland (Angela) was absolutely awful! The story started interesting, and then became more and more predictable. The slamming doors and loud noises was most of the "scary" moments. They could have more eerie creepy moments. but it just didn't happen. The first death scene looked like it was made in the 1980's. So, so, bad.Most of the progression of the movie didn't make sense. I know, it is supposed to be a scary movie, don't ask questions.Neal McDonough probably wished he would have passed on making this movie.

*************************************************************Disclaimer:I must offer to you a confession: I like movies that give me a fright. If the subject is horror I got to see more or I won't be contented all night.-from "The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati"Fair warning: I'm biased in favor of movies involving horror, monsters, the supernatural, the paranormal, space aliens, zombies, science fiction, and those Twinkies of cinema, found footage. I would rather drink syrup of ipecac than watch "On Golden Pond", "Places in the Heart", or "Fried Green Tomatoes". I am not William Blake; what you will read here is the foamy-mouthed drivel of Clyde the Village Idiot.While it's true that 97% of the movies within the above listed genres are utter rubbish, I put on garbage bags and it's my hobby to dig through the stinking pile and find the few that are, miraculously, somehow redeemable. So be confident in the knowledge that only the highest quality cultural dreck will receive a positive review.*************************************************************"THE UNSPOKEN" I'd like to reiterate the standard warning: there are definite spoilers in this review. Much of the entire structure of the picture is dependent upon a twist ending and if you want to enjoy it unpolluted by my ramblings, stop reading now.Suppose you took it into your head that YOU were going to write a ghost story. And not only that, you were also determined that your ghost story was going to be completely original. Would you be able to do it? The difficulty is that countless thousands of ghost stories have been written at this point. Coming up with something completely original is going to be a very tall order.Genuinely original stories do happen occasionally. "The Others" was completely novel, to me at least. And since then there have been a few other ghost stories that I have come across using the same basic idea of a perspective shift that made "The Others" fairly unique for its time. But of course, THOSE follow-on's aren't original anymore, are they?"The Unspoken" also tries to be original within the genre of ghost stories. Unfortunately, it doesn't pull it off nearly as well as "The Others". Sadly, its punchline is a little too clever for itself by half.The movie comes out its corner at the starting bell swinging. From the very first frame it's pretty scary and supernatural "stuff", with smears and spatterings of blood sprinkled about for good measure, are happening all over the place. (Man, I would NOT want to have been that cop…) Initially I was very impressed and was rolling along quite well.In fact, everything was going great until the last 10 minutes or so of the movie. It becomes apparent that the supernatural activity is not because of ghosts, but rather because of one of the main characters in the movie. And then we're provided with an explanation of why it is that this character can engage in supernatural activity, and then we are told point blank that none of what has happened is because of ghosts.While I appreciate the effort in coming up with a plot twist that "rationally" explains ghost -like phenomena, this was so poorly done in this picture that it casts a pall on the other 90% of the movie, which was actually fairly scary if you managed to get into the "willing suspension of disbelief" requirement. So poorly done in fact, and so badly set up that it was as bad as a "and she woke up and it was all a dream" copout or a dei ex machina (as more than one was involved).They just pulled this "explanation" from some bodily orifice and threw it at us like a hand grenade. With jazz hands.When even the heroin objects to the pat explanation, the deus making the explanation just says, "oh, you just thought you saw such and such". Wow.In the light of the revelation at the end, if you think back over the movie (or, if you have no life, watch the movie again with foreknowledge of the explanation), there's actually several large plot holes similar to this one. One gets the sense that some desperate, pressured rewriting occurred close to the finish line and we're all hoping you won't notice. And jazz hands.Within the limitations of this genre and the intrinsic barriers to originality, this movie was actually doing pretty well until it got shot at the finish line. Maybe if you just pull the plug on your screen about 10 minutes from the end…?