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Overview
This is an interesting movie for a couple reasons.
- It’s from Uruguay
- It’s meant to be a single shot movie – we discuss that because, come on, really?
- It’s micro-budget but made back a ton of money
One of the things to note is that it was shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark 2. These are very popular for small budget films and between that and computers, anyone can make a movie.
This is another disturbing movie and you spend quite a bit of time wondering what exactly is going on. There isn’t a lot of speaking – which is good if you don’t speak the language – but it ratchets up the fear and tension until the end. And it’s an ending, let me tell you. Go watch before listening, we spoil it all.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1646973/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silent_House_%282010_film%29
Trailer
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Transcript
Stephen 0:49
So we are up to Episode Six of season one and crazy. You know, we only planned on 10. So we’re getting closer to the end now so yep, another buddy flick. That’s, you know, gee, gosh, willikers It’s a great movie and everybody should go see it because it’s a family friendly thing.
Rhys 1:08
It’s definitely not that okay, I
Stephen 1:10
was wrong. I watched the wrong thing.
Rhys 1:13
That’s true. This is lacasa Buddha. And of all of the movies on my list. I believe this is the only one to hail from Uruguay. Wow. I just not a huge country for cranking out movies. To the best of my knowledge. I don’t know.
Stephen 1:35
Well, maybe now that they have the Canon EOS more people do.
Rhys 1:38
That’s right. It’s from 2010. It was directed by gustavia Hernandez. He directed seven other pieces. You would not know any of them.
Stephen 1:50
I didn’t know this one. Right.
Rhys 1:53
This has been remade into a movie called The Silent house. Starring Elizabeth Olsen. I’ve not seen that. Kind of cuz I would expect to be a little
Stephen 2:05
disappointed. Yeah, like our standard. Oh, it’s an American remake? Probably not as good. Let’s watch the original.
Rhys 2:11
Yes, it starts. Florencia Colucci. She’s been 10 other projects again, you would know any of them because they’re all from Uruguay. So
Stephen 2:22
she’s pretty young. So who knows? Maybe she’ll break out into something bigger.
Rhys 2:27
Her performance in this was excellent. So I agree. This falls under the category. It falls under a lot of different categories. This is a micro budget horror movie. It costs $6,000 to make.
Stephen 2:40
Did he go ask all his friends? Like, what’s his name on the battery?
Rhys 2:44
They did not mention how he funded it. And I imagine $6,000 probably spends better for you in Uruguay than it would say in the United States or Canada.
Stephen 2:55
Probably he had less locations to worry. Yes.
Rhys 2:58
This one, however, is one of the success stories because it did 1.1 5 million at the box office. Wow. It was shown at Cannes, it was shown at Sundance. So this movie got around Wow. Which is just amazing for you know $6,000 and one of the super cool things that he did with this was he shot the movie over four days with a Canon EOS five D Mark two. That’s a still camera. And right around 2010 the fidelity on these cameras was so great that you could take high res video on them. And you can make movies out of it. There’s an American made film that was on the shortlist maybe for a different season called absentia, the whole thing was shot on he has five D and you can’t tell they’re just the quality is that good off of these cameras.
Stephen 4:00
I mean the newest iPhones they their big marketing thing. They were comparing these people doing home movies to big Hollywood things and all the benefits of using the newest iphone how sharp it is and great yep you know we’ve said it a couple times. You know with the tools that anybody can get to you can make a good movie it really comes down to a good story good acting.
Rhys 4:23
So yeah, and I mean I actually have personal experience with this. My last job
Stephen 4:29
I make you know, euro and movie.
Rhys 4:33
I did I didn’t do video I did stills so I like good product shots and our direct remote shoots and things like that. But the amazing Bob Jones was the guy who took care of video and he would set up the very expensive cameras for like the main part but he would always set up the five D off to one side, just to get B roll to be able to cut in and again, you couldn’t tell the quality Going from that to the professional camera that he had on the tripod right next to it and
Stephen 5:04
you know for young people college kids people starting out you could get two or three of these for the cost of like something bigger more quote unquote Hollywood and with all the free tools or low cost tools online you know having three of these with angles or even doing like they do you know the B group going out doing some shots over here and stuff you know, it really changes things for independent filmmaker
Rhys 5:30
it did it really opened up the world of cinema if I mean if if you are willing to spend three grand on the camera, and you had the time and the talent, you could make a viable Hollywood great movie,
Stephen 5:42
and three grands? Nothing really.
Rhys 5:45
Yeah, absolutely. He did something else with this movie. Where he shot it all in one take his what he said supposedly, yes. I read an article on the British film industry site, and they were calling them winners. Because he’s not the only person to do this. And by that I mean fake making the movie all in one take. That’s been done several times. For instance, one of the first most famous ones Hitchcock, Alfred Hitchcock did a movie called rope. And the whole movie was shot in such a way to look like it was a single take, but it really wasn’t they were 10 to 15 minute takes. And then he would like have someone pass in front of the lens and use that as a scene to splice or edit. More recently Birdman with Michael Keaton won awards and stuff, it was meant to look like it was shot in one take. And it really wasn’t it was shot, you know, in several different that were artfully edited together, like Hernandez does with this film, where it looks like it’s all one take. But if you’re paying attention, you can see where you know, it would be very easy to make the Edit.
Stephen 7:05
Yeah, and I didn’t know that he had tried to convince people he didn’t want to take and I told you I was watching it. And when I realized what it was, like, I started watching for the Edit. So I’m like, Okay, I know there’s got to be an edit here somewhere because two hours to go through I mean, even plays, you get to go backstage and get a breather and change scenes. Yes.
Rhys 7:27
Um, the thing that actually, and I have yet to hear that he will admit that it was not one take. But technologically in 2010. If you were shooting on a Canon EOS five D Mark two, which he very proudly was, you can only record 15 minutes at a time. Right? That pretty much makes it impossible to make an 88 minute movie.
Stephen 7:49
Now coming from a tech geek head, you could probably get in there and rewire to like a portable hard drive that’s much bigger. So maybe could but I definitely wouldn’t want to play around with that on a $3,000 camera,
Rhys 8:05
especially back then because they’re very new. So you’re not going to find an article online telling you how to do this. Now. Yeah, yeah, now you probably could with no problem. And there’s a lot of shots where he is just running through the Bramble, you would not want wires hanging out of this thing as you’re doing right? Very true. Um, there have been, at least in my research, two movies that actually were recorded in a single take. One of them I actually saw, it’s called Russian arc. It’s from 2002. It is a 90 minute film. It’s a collaboration between Russian and German filmmakers. They shot it in a Russian Palace Museum, over 33 different rooms. They basically put the camera on tracks and just like rolled, they had three separate orchestras so that orchestras could be providing live the background music as they’re recording the takes. And when they got out of sound reach to the one orchestra, that orchestra would disassemble and then reassemble at the end. They had to film it four times because of mistakes that occurred. But there are actually movies about the making of that I
Stephen 9:21
was gonna say there’s no way I would do a movie like that without doing a making up because that would probably be as interesting and to like film students and stuff. And I think this particular movie, he’s gone to a lot of film, classes, seminars and people you know, their classes on it, we kind of found some of those. Yeah, he’s
Rhys 9:39
very accessible. I mean, as far as a filmmaker, and the other one was one that I came across I’ve never seen it, it’s called timecode. It’s from 2000. Not only did they shoot it in a single continuous take, they shot four films in a single continuous take of the same length and play all four at the same time. Time on the screen wow which apparently is both fascinating and headache inducing try and watch it so I’ve yet to see that film I might track it down to watch it I have no idea what it’s about but it sounds like a technical Marvel
Stephen 10:16
yeah and sometimes you know those are worth watching just for that reason
Rhys 10:21
yeah yeah um the other now um because of Buddha I enjoy the movie I don’t like the whole argument over whether or not was shot in one take or not because it obviously you know, it wasn’t the other thing that drives me nuts about movies is when they say based on a true story because nine times out of 10 they are not actually based on a true story.
Stephen 10:50
Now he didn’t if I remember right, what Okay, so it’s foreign so there’s the version with the subtitles for I don’t even know if there’s a dubbed version but personally we don’t care for those as much if we can avoid it right um, but I believe it said in the subtitles based on real events, necessarily interest right so the wording of that I like how it’s a little more ambiguous
Rhys 11:15
That’s true. If you dig into it there’s no proof at all that any of this happened but in the area of Uruguay for where he is from there is an urban legend about a shack in the woods where two men were found dead missing there tons and that is what he based the film on apparently is this kind of urban legend so
Stephen 11:40
well I guess technically the actor is going through the whole thing. Now it is really events so
Rhys 11:45
that’s true. Yes, it was based on real events as they happen type.
Stephen 11:50
And I will say and this harkens to your background and you know that you definitely like the art piece type movies, the ones that are enjoyable because of the filming or the lush shots and things like that, but I’m not disparaging that at all. I think it’s great. It’s just I know you and I noticed that theme also throughout the choices mostly
Rhys 12:13
wait till the end of the season. I’ll change your mind.
Stephen 12:17
Okay. Channel a little bit more of me then. Yes, absolutely. But yeah, and this I enjoyed watching you know, the filming of it and then picking up on the story and this time the duo is a father daughter, ma
Rhys 12:34
Oh, and we’re talking about friends.
Stephen 12:37
Okay.
Rhys 12:40
I put to you that the friends in this movie are the father and his friend next door. Okay. And you don’t really get that whole story until the credits roll.
Stephen 12:52
Right? Yeah, okay, I can see that so yeah, it and you know, really the father daughter only together a short bit of time and that’s right landlord in the Father. Only together a couple minutes. But the whole Yeah, you’re right. They cause the whole story. But again, spoiler alert, you don’t know that till the.
Rhys 13:10
Yeah, this is a movie that has a big twist in it. So again, if you want unspoiled stop now go watch it and then come back. It’s almost a double twist. It is. Um, there is one of the new French extremity films that came out in 2000 to eight years before this one came out is called tension or high tension. It’s not what’s like your favorites. Yeah. Yeah, it’s not one of my favorites. It’s a home invasion film. And the twist at the end of that film is this set kind of the same twist that’s at the end of this one. So I don’t know whether or not it was influential on his choice or you know, that it’s not a new
Stephen 14:00
fad. There’s only what 34 different stories or what right? But I was
Rhys 14:05
thinking about that as I was, you know, taking my notes down I’m like, you know, this kind of reminds me a high tension just a little bit because of the twist at the end of this is someone’s gonna hate me for this. But this is much better done than the French version from eight years prior. So okay. So the movie begins with a girl walking across the field. She’s like, crawling underneath fence. And it could be here, for all we know, because you know, it’s the same kind of thing you have out in the country here. They’re walking through waist high grass, trees in the distance fences. She’s walking a reasonable distance behind her father. He is. He’s out of focus. The camera has a very short length of focus in this film, it stays focused on her and he’s this kind of blurry image. In front of her as she’s walking along, and
Stephen 15:02
I didn’t know anything about this movie. I mean, obviously from the title there’s gonna be a house involved. But this very beginning if I didn’t know any, I mean, I didn’t know anything about but anyone coming into it I’m like, Oh, is this a zombie flick? Because it seems a lot like a post apocalyptic zombie movie.
Rhys 15:22
Yeah, walking through a field. No vehicle. Yeah, she has this backpack on. The backpack is almost childish looking. You know, it’s kind of glittery. It looks like the kind of thing that, you know, my niece’s would were on their way to the first day of school kind of, right.
Stephen 15:40
It’s obviously not that you ever had one No,
Rhys 15:44
no, not a glittery one. Okay. I was a nice Pac Man all the way. is obviously a remote area. They’re walking along, and they come upon house. And it’s not like a surprise, we’ve come upon a house. The the father, who’s walking in front, his name’s Wilson. He walks up and he just basically just kind of stops and catches his breath and wipes his brow. The house, from my point of view is gorgeous. I mean, it is cut stone. Not a lot in the way a Windows. But they have benches out front with an arbor built over top of them. It’s it’s kind of I could see it being a very welcoming place.
Stephen 16:32
If it was not as rundown it was taken care of. Yeah, yeah.
Rhys 16:39
So the dads hanging out there. And he says, and he, this gets repeated a couple times that they’d better start in the back. And then work towards the front, which I think is really interesting, because this movie is all about dealing with the past, right? And it’s
Stephen 17:00
the actions of it in the present. There’s are some symbolism again, there’s our symbolism
Rhys 17:04
right there where he’s saying, well, we should start in the back with the grass and work our way towards the front. And so here we are in the front in time, and it would have behooved him to look to the past. And maybe, you know, I don’t know how he could have been prepared for what’s about to happen.
Stephen 17:22
And they never really specify what they are doing there. I took it that they were there to clean it up. And because the seller shows up, but they never like came out and said that specifically.
Rhys 17:34
They don’t really what the basic gist of what’s happening is there’s the seller, his name is next door. And Wilson the girl’s father is nesters friend, and Nestor wants to sell the house. And it’s been empty for a very long time. And so he has hired Wilson to come and clean it and get it ready to be sold.
Stephen 17:56
And it’s one of many that he Yes,
Rhys 17:59
Nestor has several houses. The childhood the home is locked up. It’s dark, it’s tucked away. A lot like, again, looking forward in the film or what, like Laura has memories of her past are locked up dark, tucked away, just like this house is right now. And there’s going to be problems once you open it up and get into there.
Stephen 18:29
Wow, you’re really getting the symbolism out of this. Yeah.
Rhys 18:34
Um, while they’re there, a car pulls up. And the owner of the house next door gets out of the house. And he walks over and he’s talking to the Father while he’s talking to the Father. That’s happening out of frame to the right side. The cameras still on Laura, who is standing a distance away kind of looking at the ground. She’s not Nestor knows Wilson, but apparently he’s not the kind of person that she’s just going to kind of run up and be thrilled to see.
Stephen 19:06
Yeah, throughout this whole opening thing. She doesn’t seem happy about the situation at all. She doesn’t seem like she wants to be there like but she’s not petulant, like a little kid. You know, she’s just Yeah,
Rhys 19:15
yeah, she’s not pouting. She’s very obedient. So to the point that Wilson says, Hey, you know, come on up and say hello. So she comes up and she and Nestor did the whole European kiss on the cheek thing. And she has to get something out of his truck. I don’t even remember what it was. Maybe the keys that she’s got to get something out of his truck. So she opens the door to his truck climbs in and he has a rosary hanging from his rear view mirror. And she stops and takes a moment to just look at it. It actually, I don’t know about symbolism wise, but I think the whole reason that Hernandez does that is because later on in the film That shows up, the rosary shows up. And that way you can connect the two you can be like, Oh, that was that stores rosary from Australia. So she, she pays attention to it. The two guys are wondering where she is they look over, she seems kind of nervous. She like curls out of the truck. Like she wasn’t touching anything. And they go into the house. The house is dark, it’s all boarded up. Next door, says, Don’t go upstairs. There’s tile work up there. It’s kind of dangerous. And I wish I had a nickel for every time she walks past the stairs and stops just to look up the steps.
Stephen 20:42
Yes. And on top of that, that jumped out at me. It’s like, Wait a second, if they’re here to clean this place, you’re telling them to stay out of the upstairs. So that was like a red flag indicator or something is wrong, but it seems so weird for him to say that. Yeah. And then when she’s looking up the steps all the time, you start to wonder, is she gonna brave this? Yeah, what?
Rhys 21:08
What is up there? And why is she so nervous about it? Nester goes to leave. And he says, I’ll be back later with food and blankets, and Wilson’s like, you don’t have to do that. But he walks him out. As he’s leaving, Laura does what I would typically do, she walks around the house and just looks at everything that’s there, she walks around this room looking just the knickknacks. That’s something I do a lot. If you know, no one will ever invite me over. But if you do invite me over, I will go around and I look at the little knickknacks that you have on display, look at the books that you have on your bookshelf, just out of curiosity, right? And the stuff that they have in this house. Maybe in Uruguay, it’s not weird. But to me, it was a little strange. Like there’s some kind of ceremonial like knife in a sheath on display over here. And then a whole collection of animal skulls that are completely cleaned just laid out. I’m like, a weird thing to just have kicking around your house.
Stephen 22:12
And I will say, getting through the whole movie, then this is probably a movie that’s well worth a second watch, because you view it completely differently the second time, absolutely everything. So when you’re watching her, particularly the actions she’s taking have a whole different meaning after you’ve seen the rest of the movie. So I mean, kudos to that. It’s definitely thought provoking in that way.
Rhys 22:37
Yeah, it is. When you first watch the movie, you’ll this is this is one of the reasons I enjoy this movie so much is when you first watch the movie, it is a home invasion film. And you’re like, you’re just waiting for the next action thing to take place. And then it gets to the end. And you’re like, what just happened there. But then when you go through and watch it the second time you pick up on all the little clues that they drop throughout the entire film.
Stephen 23:05
So the director, he was the writer also. I mean, it’s all right. This is all him definitely, you know, kudos to him. And I hope he gets something else out and some more popular things out.
Rhys 23:17
Crazy talented guy. And you know, the only thing I didn’t like about it is the whole it was one shot. Yeah, it wasn’t just just say it was filmed to look like it was one shot. That’s impressive enough.
Stephen 23:28
Everybody’s good with that. Yeah.
Rhys 23:32
The dad comes back. He promptly like sits down in the chair covers himself up with a blanket turns on the radio and passes out.
Stephen 23:39
Yeah, I wasn’t impressed with the dads acting. And you know, he he was definitely not as good as the curl.
Rhys 23:46
Yes, right. I didn’t even look at the actor’s name. Yeah. Apologies to the actor. But the lawyer on the other hand, walks past the stairs, stops, looks up the stairs, continues into the bathroom, and changes out of her shirt. And I fully get this. She’s like hiked forever to get where she’s at. So now she’s here. She’s going to put on something more comfortable. She puts on a white tank top. And then she comes back out.
Stephen 24:18
Yeah, my thought later was well, after everything that happened, she didn’t need to change her shirt.
Rhys 24:26
But she puts on the white shirt. And it becomes important because it shows things way better than that whole blue thing she was wearing. She comes back or dad’s asleep listening the radio she turns her radio off. And she grabs a photo album that’s just sitting around and sits down in a chair and starts leafing through the photo album. And there are two weird things about the photo album one, there’s a lot of pictures missing. And to the pictures that are in there are Polaroids they’re not like you know Acts. I don’t want the actual photographs. But they’re not pictures taken and then sent out to be, right. Yeah, these are these are Instamatic kind of shots.
Stephen 25:08
And just having a photo album sitting around this abandoned house, I thought that was odd. That’s one of the things people usually take.
Rhys 25:16
Yeah, you’re right. But being a kid who grew up in front of an abandoned house, I know that like when the people left that house, in this case, my grandparents, they just left stuff in it. Yeah. They bought all new stuff for their new house, and just left all the old stuff in it planning to go back and get it someday. And never did. And it sat there for 3040 years terror, right for terrifying kids for ages.
Stephen 25:41
Yeah, for us to go explore and get scared. And then your brother and find,
Rhys 25:44
huh. So we’re about 18 minutes in. When there’s banging sounds.
Stephen 25:52
There’s only a few jump scares in the movie. And this is the first one.
Rhys 25:56
Yes, there is. And it’s not like light banging. It’s like banging, banging. like someone’s nailing the door shut. is the kind of banging Good point. Yeah, she gets startled by this goes have to wake her dad up. And he’s like it. It’s an old house noises I’m going back to sleep. And he ignores her. And again, knowing what we know, now that we’ve seen the film, this could be symbolic of the fact that she came to him with problems when she was growing up, and he ignored those. But he ignores it and falls back to sleep. And so she sits down in the chair and she’s trying to fall asleep. But she’s like, got the whole scared mouse. Look, the eyes are wide, and she’s like, looking around. And then she hears noises upstairs. So she wakes him up. And he’s like, fine, I’ll go upstairs to check. You know, kind of annoyed. He gets up, goes to the stairs goes upstairs. She’s down there. And again, this is 18 minutes into the film. This film wastes very little time. Yeah. He’s up there. And then you can hear him make the sounds of someone being hurt. And then like a thump. And now she’s really scared. Because it did sound like you would imagine someone sounds like if they’ve been professionally executed for that matter. It’s just it’s like this super quiet assassination kind of things like, oh, and then a thump.
Stephen 27:36
Yeah, it worked well in a video game. It would.
Rhys 27:38
Absolutely. And I thought that to this movie felt a
Stephen 27:41
lot like a silent hill. Yeah, a couple of these movies have Yeah,
Rhys 27:46
there’s a little clue here a little clue their big twist at the end. Yeah. So she’s freaked out. The camera has at this point. And I found this really interesting because it’s it’s a good visual tool. The camera had gone over to the stairs, where the stairs were. But it was still focusing on her in the lit room through a doorway. Yeah. And then. So she’s like in this box of light. And she’s running from place to place trying to get out through the windows or other doors in that room and finding they’re all locked. And I thought it was kind of cool, because it looks like she’s in a box and she’s acting like she’s in a box. And also
Stephen 28:28
something else I noticed started noticing here is the little amount of talking. So if you don’t like reading subtitles, there’s not tons in here. There’s sections, but there’s a lot with just her dealing with what’s going on. And it’s all her emotion without talking because there’s nobody else but her. And that is what really stuck out to me because it did make it creepy or it did help build the tension even more. I think talking in it, and I think a lot of other movies would have done that had her talking out loud, saying things which always comes off as phony and stupid. And they didn’t do that. She was just afraid screaming maybe crying. There’s not a
Rhys 29:09
lot of talk. Yep. She beats on the doors couple times. They’re locked. They don’t seem to be able to be opened, possibly nailed shut, possibly nailed. Right. She walks over towards the camera, which is towards the stairs and stops and looks up the stairs. And then she sees something on the floor and bends down to pick it up. It’s a ring. So she bent down to pick up the ring and once she does again I was talking about that tight focus. She’s in focus so she bends down. Everything behind her is blurry and you can see that the door opposite is open now. And there’s a guy in a T shirt and a blue shirt standing in the door. She stands up with the ring and turns and the doors closed again. Nice creepy little thing. I wouldn’t call it a jumpscare But it was like this little creepy background thing. And it’s I think this is one of those movies that when I was making notes on it, I was like, if you blink, you’re gonna miss something.
Stephen 30:11
Several of these movies have that. Yeah. And this one, definitely you can’t blink. And if you don’t like the subtitles, that’s fine, because you’re not doing tons of it. But yeah, watching.
Rhys 30:22
I don’t really know that you need to read what’s happening in this movie.
Stephen 30:26
No, it’s all visceral.
Rhys 30:29
Yeah. The store even the story itself plays itself out fine with just, you know, just visually watching what happens.
Stephen 30:38
It’s done very well. I mean, you pick up on the story through her motion again. That’s why I liked her acting in this. Yeah, along with the clues and then filming. I mean, he definitely had it planned out. But
Rhys 30:50
oh, yeah, I mean, the whole thing was very well executed. She goes back to the room and finds that door is unlocked. Which, you know, good. We as the viewers kind of figured, since there was just somebody there. She opens the door and finds her dad’s lantern in the hall outside, picks it up and turns around, and here’s like the first jumpscare. She turns around, and there’s her dad standing there. But he like instantly falls on top of her and she like drags him into the lit room. His hands are bound. His face is a bloody mess. And his hands are a bloody mess. And at this point in time, she has now gotten his blood on her shirt on the white tank top. So you can see it real well. She starts to look for the keys to the house because they were in his pocket and they’re not there. So then she starts checking everywhere under under cushions. She’s running around the room looking for these keys. Because she’s convinced she’s locked in the house. She’s going through the house, like through the entire downstairs, she goes to the kitchen at one point in time and jumpscare number two, she turns because there’s a noise over by the refrigerator and on top of the refrigerator. She like reaches up. Oh, I should point out she grabs a sickle.
Stephen 32:18
Yeah. Which was an interesting choice. Yeah,
Rhys 32:21
yeah. Cuz I mentioned there’s like this ceremonial knife that was sitting, you know, on display in there. But she grabs the sickle the tools she knows how to use,
Stephen 32:29
and also the one that the Grim Reaper uses. Yes.
Rhys 32:32
Yeah. Yeah. Not not a giant size. People don’t go thinking it’s unfortunate long thing. It’s a single handle thing. So she has that and she’s in the kitchen. And she like pulled stuff away from the top of the fridge, and birds fly out. And again, you know, the symbolism spirit, souls leaving blah, blah, blah. But the birds go flying out little jumpscare there. She goes back to the main room. And her father is now sitting in the chair. But he’s still in the same dead condition he was before. So somebody put him in a chair. And on his lap is a stuffed doll of a girl in the sun dress. Just a little one. I mean, nothing fancy. But certainly creepy enough, left her body laying on the floor and you came back and it was sitting in a chair, adding the doll was just like the cherry on top of that cake.
Stephen 33:24
Did you ever play that PT demo that they had that was supposed to? That’s where I started thinking this was just like that, because in that demo, every time you went around the hall and did things, everything changed. And yeah, I kept feeling like that. This is like that PT demo that every time she goes into a room. It’s different than the last time.
Rhys 33:44
Yeah. Um, it now she starts to get smart. And she decides she’s going to block the door that his body came through. So she moves this great big cabinet over to block the door. And then for probably only the second time in the in the movie, there’s music, because she hears Music Playing from upstairs,
Stephen 34:05
which you asked you like it was some of the music’s like so if it’s one take, are they adding this or did it? Yeah, so
Rhys 34:14
yeah. So she goes upstairs. Um, she finds her radio and turns it off, and she finds this Polaroid camera. And then she’s picking up the camera. She like basically takes a selfie with it accidentally. She’s like looking at it. She turns it around. It goes off the flashes crazy bright. The picture falls out. And it’s a picture of her. And behind her off to one side. Is this kind of blurry vision of a little girl in a white dress.
Stephen 34:44
Yeah. Which you know, anyone picking up a Polaroid camera that it goes off? You knew exactly that was coming. Yeah, but you mentioned the Polaroid pictures on the album. And here’s the camera. Yep.
Rhys 34:59
She comes across A bunch of paintings. And the paintings are, are pretty good. There’s like four or five of them. However, the painter in like a folk art style has left the faces off. They’ve done everything. I mean, you know, even the glasses that the person’s wearing, but no details on the face. And there’s one of the guys sitting there. There’s one of like a whole group of people, but one of them is of a girl in a white dress, sitting in a red overstuffed chair. And it made me think, being so close to the photograph. This is the girl who’s like showing up this ghostly figure who’s showing up and all of her, you know, because this ghost shows up several times. She hears something. And so she crawls through this little hidey hole back into this little corner and turns her lamp off and you hear the door open. And you see some shoes come in some jeans and a knife. So there’s not only a ghost in a white dress of a little girl running around. There’s also a guy with a knife.
Stephen 36:08
Yeah, so here’s your home invasion thing. It really Yes, that’s exactly what this was. I’m hiding. Yeah, yep.
Rhys 36:16
The figure leaves. And she goes out to the room and sees the key to the house lie on the floor. She bends down to pick it up. And this very thick, masculine arm reaches down and grabs her by the back of the neck. And she very brilliantly, takes that sickle and just whacks around behind her and gets the guy in the leg. He lets go. We never see who it is, right? He lets go. She runs down the stairs, gets to the door, fumbles with the key in the door, gets the door unlocked and goes running outside. Right.
Stephen 36:57
And this was interesting, because the whole time so far. She’s been trying to get away. And I’m thinking okay, now she’s getting away. You know what’s gonna happen? This part? Actually, I chuckled, because it’s so reminded me of Halloween. But But I was like is movie about over? You know, I was confused at this point. But okay, great. She got out.
Rhys 37:18
Yeah, she gets out. She runs Sue’s brush and the bat brambles, and she ends up on the road. She stops and looks back and that girl in the white dress is standing in the road. And she’s not really that much out of focus. I mean, this is like a clear shot of a girl with black hair in a white dress. But then, she turns around, and Nestor is returning in his truck. She almost runs her over. So she climbs in the truck. And she’s like, ah, we got to get away. We got to get away. And now she’s like, Oh, we got to go see what’s going on. So he drives back to the house, when she’s like, pleading with him not to go in. Yeah, I
Stephen 38:04
thought his reactions was a little. Okay, maybe, maybe not. But if I was her, I’d jump out of the damn truck and just chuck it down the road. I wouldn’t be going along with this. I mean, it was
Rhys 38:15
Yeah, you go check it out. I’ll see you back a base Exactly. So he goes into the house. And every time someone goes into this house, he does this cool thing with the camera where he has the aperture set so that when the door is open, everything in the house is black, you can see nothing, it might be a black sheet of curtain hanging down over the door, and the person walks in and just vanishes into that blackness. And it happened at the start of the movie to when they first went into the house. I think that’s a super cool, little subtle effect.
Stephen 38:49
And it’s all those little things. And we’ve noticed this with the other movies, we’ve watched low budgets, they have to do these things to build the tension. But they’re done so well. And maybe it’s because we’re so used to all the special effects in that that it actually makes it creepier and a much more horrific movie doing some of these in my opinion.
Rhys 39:07
Yeah, and I think like the difference between this and a big budget is like this is this guy’s passion project, all these little details. Like these are the things that he would think about while he’s falling asleep at night. As opposed to like, you know, an Avengers movie where there’s like a whole staff of people just to maintain continuity on the film. Oh, no, you know, I’m the Colson guy, his locker would look like this. And you know, so they have a whole staff do this. This is just this one guy. It’s just very impressive to me. Nestor comes back out of the house, so he’s got way more success than Wilson did. He got out of the house. He comes to Laura and he’s like, Where’s your dad and she’s like, I don’t know. And so he has her go in with him. This part reminded me just vaguely of the descent. If you seen the descent,
Stephen 40:08
no, but I know it, okay?
Rhys 40:11
You have this group of spelunkers who go into a cave, horrible things happen. One of them escapes. The descent two starts with her going to the police saying this crazy stuffs happening in the cave and they’re like, you show us and they take her back and force her back into the game. That’s exactly what this felt like. Like misters like, Okay, this was traumatic for you. But let’s go, we gotta go see what’s going on.
Stephen 40:36
And like I said, the girl’s actions seemed a little odd here, the first time through, but if you watch it a second time, it her actions take on totally different meanings. Oh, absolutely, definitely be argued. I mean, it’s one of those that we love that you could argue two different viewpoints on something
Rhys 40:53
you could this could all be a psychological play on her, you know, to be in the right place at the right time. So the two of them go inside. They go into the main living room and nesters missing he’s not I mean Wilson’s missing he’s not sitting in the chair anymore. The dolls gone too. So now they’re looking for Wilson. They go upstairs. And as they’re looking around, Nestor just basically verbally says, I don’t know I he kind of gives up. And while she’s standing in this, this is this, I thought was another super nice detail. They’re standing in this really dust covered room. Everything has just never been touched. And sitting on a bookshelf is a perfectly clean Polaroid camera. No dust on that camera. And she sees it. And she looks at it. And then when she turns around, nesters gone, yeah. Just leaves her. Yeah. If that’s what happened, yes. Yeah. Then she sees the doll that was on her father’s lap. And when she sees that, the lights all go out. And everything’s black.
Stephen 42:08
Another edit, but
Rhys 42:12
we’ve quit counting by now. Yeah. Um, so she does that whole thing where she grabs the camera, and she uses the camera flash to illuminate the room momentarily. So she can try and navigate her way out. And as a guy who’s like, worked with camera flashes, I don’t get that. Because if I’m in a pitch black room and the flash goes off, I still can’t see anything.
Stephen 42:36
Yeah, but it’s mainly for the audience. It is for the
Rhys 42:39
audience. So you see, as she’s taking these pictures to find their way to the exit, one of the shots that happens, there’s the girl in the white dress. Then another shot that happens. There’s a guy with a knife coming at her. And I think you’d have to actually sit there and slow it down and look and compare it but I think it’s her father.
Stephen 43:03
Yeah, I wasn’t sure who it was or whose she thought it was but
Rhys 43:08
but it vaguely looks like him. Then the last shot before she makes it out is a blood spattered on the floor. Right? Cuz I think you even hear, like, flesh getting cut. Yes. Um, she gets out of the room. And she’s not moving like she’s been cut. So if anyone’s been sliced into it wasn’t her. She finds herself in a room with one of my personal horror terror elements that always freaks me out an antique baby stroller and a baby mobile, and the room is lit. And she pulls the blanket back from the stroller. And inside is a collection of Polaroid photographs.
Stephen 43:54
Yeah, this again, this This scene is definitely a silent hill feel to it?
Rhys 43:59
Yes. Because she pulls up the photographs. And there are pictures of her. And there’s a couple with Nestor in them. And in the photographs that she’s pregnant, like visibly pregnant.
Stephen 44:13
That was the first like, whoa, whoa, wait a second, hold on. Pause What the hell is going on
Rhys 44:19
right? As she’s looking at them through a doorway behind her a blurry figure moves past. Again, you blink you miss it now but it was there for just a half a second. So she starts moving through the upstairs, she gets to this construction site where they’ve put drop cloths of clear plastic and the camera is on the other side of the plastic as she moves through. So she’s moving through and you can’t really make out any details or definition about her. Just like in your head. After seeing those pictures. You really don’t know anything about her, you realize that she’s completely undefined really as you go. She had a father, and he had a friend. And the father said, we don’t know anything about this girl, right? She then finds herself into what I consider the creepiest house creepy is room in the house. It is a small room, completely bare of anything except a bed. The bed is stripped down to the mattress. There’s black cloth hung on the wall. And nesters rosary from his truck is hanging off the side of the bed.
Stephen 45:32
And I loved this movie. And again, this is probably why we feel it’s like a video game. Because it moves throughout the house and you get new rooms every couple minutes. So it’s progressing. And that’s how the story progresses. So it’s, I mean, really well done in how it’s doing that instead of all in one room, or she gets all the rooms right at the beginning and keeps going back to them. So it’s constantly the next room, the newest room, the newest look and newest clues and you know very, yeah, build out the
Rhys 46:02
latest map. Yep. She, yes. She looks at the rosary and then notices the black cloth on the wall and walks over and pulls it down. And the wall is just covered with Polaroid pictures. And as she looks at the Polaroid pictures, there are women on the pictures in various states of undress that bed and photographs with nest or in them with these women. And at this point in time, like her facial features change. She instead of being the scared mouse, she has this kind of hard look on her eye. Like she is now determined to do something now
Stephen 46:45
we’re back to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and she’s the leather face guy leather hooded guy.
Rhys 46:50
Yeah, right. Um, so she leaves the room and goes downstairs, and next door is lying facedown on the floor. And she checks on him and he’s just lying there completely unmoving. And she leaves and as soon as she leaves, he opens his eyes. So he’s consciously playing dead is what it boils down to.
Stephen 47:22
It was done very creepily. Also, it is very weird.
Rhys 47:26
His hands are bound, she tries to take the bindings off his hands, she can’t. So when she leaves the camera pans back, you can see his face. You see, as I open up, and over on this side of the frame, like he’s on the left side of the frame. And over on the right side of the frame. There’s a knife on the floor that he glances at a couple times. Like he’s thinking about maybe going for it. But she comes back in and he closes his eyes again. At this point, she like rolls him over and he has no choice but to acknowledge that she’s there. He can’t pretend anymore. And he’s asking her to help him. And then the conversation changes pretty drastically.
Stephen 48:13
Yeah.
Rhys 48:16
She starts getting very upset with him. And he actually goes out and says the whole reason I called your dad was so I could see you again. And she’s like telling him to tell her he loves her.
Stephen 48:31
Yeah, she’s jealous. Yes, it was like holy shit What?
Rhys 48:38
And then to make it even more, like psychologically creepy and out of left field. Um, she’s like, says something about how he killed their daughter. And he’s like, you know, we couldn’t have kept her so this isn’t just her completely hallucinating. This was a thing. And then she says DSC here she’s here now and props him up. And you can see she looks in there’s the girl with the black hair and the white dress. She propped him up and there’s no one there she then proceeds to kill Nestor. Yeah,
Stephen 49:22
so right now this is another like hold on I gotta pause this and assimilate What’s going on? Because then you start going it was everything that happened that she do it but in her crazed mind she didn’t realize it and you know the psychotic break or is it really something else going on? Is there really ghosts and, and back to what we did with the innocence? Maybe the ghosts are controlling her but she knows. Obviously her and Nestor were doing stuff together and, you know, so maybe she’s just like, I was like, hold on. I really gotta take a break for a moment.
Rhys 49:57
Yeah, yeah. And even At this point, there’s still those questions. And they don’t answer them until the credits start rolling. Yeah, which is insane to me. So she after she is killed Nestor, she turns to leave. And as she turns the camera pans and it looks on the left side of the frame, like there’s a tongue lying on the floor, it just goes by really quickly. Now, I might not I might have ignored that completely if I hadn’t been reading that. This story this is based on the tongue involve two guys found whose tongues had been cut out,
Stephen 50:32
right? And maybe that was just an Easter egg. Maybe Maybe.
Rhys 50:37
So she leaves the house, and she just starts walking through. And like they do in a lot of these movies. There’s like a post tag that shows up. That’s like the bodies were found. There were some disturbing pictures. But Laura was never found, right. And she continues to walk and then the credit starts roll. And as the credits roll, they start to show the pictures of the friends from this, from this episode. And the friends are Nestor and Wilson, who apparently would bring young girls back to this place to have their way with them. And so there’s lots of pictures of like Nester, some girl wearing just a bra and Wilson, pictures of Wilson and some other girl and Nestor with Laura.
Stephen 51:23
Yeah, so then it’s like, Okay, wait, did her father know about all this? And if so why would they go back to the house? Did she set all this up for revenge? And I was like, Okay, I don’t know. Yeah.
Rhys 51:35
Because typically, when you get to the credits, you know, the movies done, the story is told, and if there’s anything that happens in the credits, or after the credits, it’s just like a bonus, you know, for you. So this,
Stephen 51:48
so this was key. Yeah, you had an ending, where she gets out there dead. She leads, it could have ended right there. And it was a lot of Okay, wait, what was going on and all that, then they do all this with the pictures? It’s like, Okay, wait, now I have completely different questions. It totally changes your viewpoint of the movie, and what you think and everything. And it was again, hugely masterfully well done. And yeah, it was pretty amazing. It’s, again, this is crazy, because they did a remake. So this is kind of why I suspect it’s not as good, but this is not what Hollywood would have accepted. You know,
Rhys 52:26
so I haven’t seen the Hollywood version, but I have read about it. And I know that there is actually like, scripted verbal parts, where they explain what happened to like, so like Elizabeth Olsen plays Laura. And like, Laura has this ghost that’s talking to her and the ghost explains the whole thing, you know, like, solves that for you. partway through the movie. At the end of the movie, after the credits are done, there’s this scene where she’s like cleaning up in this orchard. And she like, puts her puts the blade away in her bag and puts it back on her shoulder. And into the orchard come skipping this little girl with black hair and a white dress. And you’re like maybe she really existed this whole time
Stephen 53:17
again. I already changed my mind and thoughts on the movie twice. Let’s just do a third time, right? Yeah, we’ll go for full trifecta here.
Rhys 53:25
She picks up the girl gives her a big hug and they start walking and she’s talking to the little girl about going to see grandma and son at Grandma’s Yeah. And and you know, it’s a couple days walk, and then the camera pans back and she’s not holding the girl’s hand anymore. She’s holding that dolls hand. Yeah. And once again, within like how last five minutes of the movie. They changed your whole perspective on it. Yeah.
Stephen 53:53
Crazy. I mean, again, it’s probably not a movie I would have known about. I may have heard that silent house was a remake of something. And if I had watched silent house, I might have been like, I don’t need to see that. But Wow, just so much going on it. Yeah. It’s so well done this, this is a movie that would not have worked well as a book. You know? No, it’s it’s totally made for video and film.
Rhys 54:23
It I mean, I don’t want to say necessarily that it wouldn’t have worked well as a book. But I would be really interested to see how it was done as a book. You know what I mean,
Stephen 54:36
if it was effective, because it would be hard to leave it ambiguous. And it would be hard to portray some of the ghostly and some of the psychotic things in a book, which is funny because our next movie had a book and you were like, really that was a book and I was like yeah, crazy. So
Rhys 54:54
and I can see the next film being a book that makes all kinds of sense, especially since the book is Swedish. The film Swedish And again, it has an American remake. We’ll be watching. Let the right one in next time. But overall, yeah, classifying silent. lacasa Buddha is really a difficult thing to do. It was a micro budget film, we can definitely micro budget horror film, we can put it in that category. At least it was kind of a home invasion. It was kind of a psychotic breakdown. It was kind of a ghost story all at once. Yeah. And there’s a guy who did a bunch of films from Italy back in the 70s named Geico. And he has this very specific style that became the name of these movies, Geico movies. And this is definitely not one of those. But what he would do frequently you will, you’ll see in a guy a movie very frequently is that the architecture itself becomes a character of the show. And in this movie, the house I mean, literally from room to room was basically just, I don’t even want to say it was a character it was multiple characters, like each different spot of the house was telling its own story. Yeah,
Stephen 56:14
it’s still so even with what? Pick any of those three things. You could have a totally different thought on the movie. And what was the final verdict? But you know, who knows? Honestly, I could probably sit here and argue with myself psychotically that it’s this and then five minutes later, I’d look like Gollum arguing. No, it was like, I don’t know. But it looks like paranormal. Oh,
Rhys 56:41
yeah. Yeah, yeah. It’s just a really well done film. A really nice little hidden gem out there. If you can find a copy of it. Yeah, it’s difficult.
Stephen 56:53
Yeah. So anyone going to Uruguay? If they’re selling them in the stores? Yeah, that’d be awesome. Yeah, for sure. I don’t know if in the pandemic world how many people are going to Uruguay from Northeast Ohio. But
Rhys 57:09
yeah, well, you never know. It. The movie was really well done. And I like to contrast it with the battery. Because they were both made for the same amount of money. Right? Um, and I think the battery and has a much more American feel to it, you know? I mean, it was really straightforward. This story was just out there. And I can’t say anything culturally about Uruguay and film, cuz this is the only one I’ve ever seen, you know,
Stephen 57:45
and and if other than being in a foreign language in with subtitles, I would never guessed. It was from another country. It very well could have been. I mean, just because the whole one shot thing and the thing. There wasn’t because like you’ve mentioned France and a lot of times you know, you’ll see a movie from Britain. It’s like, Oh, this feels like other British movies. This feels like other French movies that I’ve seen. You know, Japanese movies always have a certain feel. Yeah, absolutely. But this, I wouldn’t have identified it from any particular country. No.
Rhys 58:23
Yeah, they were speaking Spanish. That was about all the more luck because like I said, the whole scene of them walking across that field. That could have been my backyard.
Stephen 58:33
Or field wouldn’t look like that. Yeah,
Rhys 58:35
yeah, I mean, it’s abandoned house.
Stephen 58:38
Oh my God, we could have made this movie. That’s right. If only we’d
Rhys 58:41
had a Canon EOS five D Yeah, too bad what no
Stephen 58:46
looked is the same. You know, the little camera off the comet arsa.
Rhys 58:53
file with pixels.
Stephen 58:54
Yeah, how many five and a quarters would that take for the whole movie? yet? They’re like, split it up and then recompile it back together?
Rhys 59:01
No, it was all done in one shot. On a camera.
Stephen 59:05
We had a really long extension cord. Yep, yep. lugging it around. So Alright, so there’s a mocassin Buddha, another good flick to go see again, like most of these not necessarily for everybody. Not every horror movie aficionados jam. But if you are looking for something different, if you’re tired of the Hollywood ones, the ones that this, you know, everything’s a slasher flick at Halloween, and you know, you want something different this is, you know, this will blow you away. It kind of makes lots of other movies in lesser.
Rhys 59:37
Someday just, you know, when we’re feeling bad about ourselves, we should get the American remakes for all these movies and sit down and force ourselves.
Stephen 59:46
Just the bad American remakes of Yes, better movies I’ve seen
Rhys 59:52
here’s martyrs done really poorly.
Stephen 59:56
To get painful.
Rhys 1:00:00
Okay, no, that’s a bad idea. We’re not gonna do that. Yeah,
Stephen 1:00:03
I see enough bad movies. So there you go. Alright, so next time, let the right one in. And I don’t know how to pronounce it in Swedish and me either. So but another good movie coming up. Yep. And I, I was joking with you. So it’s like we get all your favorite vampire movies in season one. There’s three of them or whatever.
Rhys 1:00:24
Yeah, yeah. You know, 30 days of night. And after that, I mean, I did watch blood red sky. And that one wasn’t bad. Yeah. I mean,
Stephen 1:00:37
it felt like a lot of Netflix movies. It felt like a TNT made for TV movie.
Rhys 1:00:42
Yeah, yeah, it was okay. Yeah, a little too long. But other than that,
Stephen 1:00:47
yeah, I thought so too. Yeah. All right, man.
Rhys 1:00:51
Cool. Next time. Next.
