Production Companies: Lighthouse Pictures, Sapphire Fire Limited
Distributors: Great Point Media (world-wide), Paladin (USA)
Release Date: October 28, 2016
Haunted house movies are a big staple of the horror genre. Films like The Conjuring, The Amityville Horror, and The Haunting, among many others, have explored this territory before. Some are still effective, providing you can find a clever ways to approach things (such as the 2014 film Housebound) while many others have become routine. Such is the challenge facing The Unspoken, a new horror flick from the executive producers of Paranormal Activity and Insidious. And while for much of the film’s 96 minute runtime it’s your standard fare, a clever twist ending lifts it up above others of its kind. It’s an ending you won’t see coming, yet the explanation the accompanies it is told succinctly and logically, and actually makes a great deal of sense. It makes for a good payoff to a film that otherwise would be easy just to lump in with others of the genre.
The Unspoken begins in 1997, with a police officer (Matt Bellefleur) answering a call at a house located on a remote street in the small town of Irving. He finds the family missing there, and encounters a woman (Jessie Fraser) covered in blood. Things move forward 17 years later, where the woman’s daughter, Angela (Jodelle Ferland), is experiencing nightmares. Angela’s father is out of work, and she makes a passable living at a local day care. Her boss (Chilton Crane) offers her a part time job to help a woman care for her 9 year old son, who hasn’t spoken for two years since the death of his father. Angela checks the job out, which just happens to be in the home, called the Briar House by the locals, where the family went missing 17 years earlier. She meets the mother, Jeanie Peterson (Pascale Hutton), her housekeeper Portia (Rukiya Bernard), and the boy, Adrian (newcomer Sunny Suljic). Naturally, things begin to take a creepy turn, first through simple things then escalating into full blown violence by the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4jSaxIBOKg&feature=youtu.be
Director and screenplay writer Sheldon Wilson (Kaw, Shallow Ground, The Hollow) does a nice job at maintaining a suspenseful atmosphere throughout, and keeps things moving along nicely. There is a bit over reliance on cheap jump scares though, with sudden appearances and the routine gotcha music. They’re somewhat effective, but not really satisfying. The plot does get a little convoluted, with a couple of subplots (Angela dealing with the loss of her mother and a trio of town drug dealers who have something hidden in the Briar House) thrown in. Neither of the subplots is anything we haven’t seen before, but Wilson manages to tie everything together by the end of the movie. The performances by the cast are for the most part decent. Jodelle Ferland (Silent Hill) plays Angela in an almost perpetual state of fear and uncertainty, with occasional bouts of confidence. Her fear is given an explanation, albeit a cliched one, and while she is likeable enough, we never truly get a good sense over why she’s so fearful or awkward with others in the town. A brief hint at a possible lesbian relationship with friend Pandy (Chanelle Peloso) really goes nowhere. The trio of drug dealers (Jonathan Whitesell, Jake Croker, and Anthony Konechny) are pretty much the street punks we’ve encountered in numerous movies before. Newcomer Sunny Suljic is pretty effective as the mute and a little scary Adrian, and Pascale Hutton (Sanctuary) does well at masking her true identity. The mystery of what happened at the Briar House does get explained in a clever fashion, giving what otherwise could have been just another routine haunting flick a decent payoff.
In all, the Unspoken doesn’t tread much new ground here in a genre that’s been crowded for some time now. It’s effective enough and entertaining enough to sustain you for the 96 minutes, but what helps it stand out in the end is its clever twist. That twist you really won’t see coming, and while it could have been something that made no sense as it comes out of left field, Wilson does do a nice job at giving it a logical explanation. And it’s one not seen too often. The final scene prompted a satisfying chuckle from me, and made this worthwhile viewing. It doesn’t reinvent the haunted house genre. But the movie does enough different with it to make it stand out and be worth your time.