Interview and article by Stuart Barr courtesy of FrightFest
Silent House is the latest American remake of a foreign language horror film, in this case Gustavo Hernández’ Uruguayan film The Silent House – aka La Casa Muda. Sticking closely to the original’s template it develops its own flavour in the second half. Both films take place in an isolated house being renovated by a young girl and her father. Without power or a phone line they settle in for the night but there appears to be an intruder stalking them.
Based on a true story, the original developed the backstory for events post credits. The remake goes further, taking the slim story into darker territory. The remake is also blessed with a terrific central performance from rising star Elizabeth Olson.
Undertaking a remake is an act fraught with pitfalls but remaking The Silent House presents a particular challenge in that the unique selling point of the original was that it presented itself as one continuous take in real time. This challenging technique (some may say gimmick) has been retained by remake directors Chris Kentis and Laura Lau. We took some time to talk to Lau, also the screenwriter, about the challenges of real time filmmaking, and the attractions of real life horrors.
The duo’s previous feature was the low budget survival horror Open Water, which was shot digitally at sea with no crew. Was the technical challenge the primary attraction of taking on this remake, or was it the case that the producers approached them because they had a proven record shooting a technically difficult project? It seems it was the latter: “[production company] Wild Bunch had the remake rights to the original and they thought of us” says Lau. “It was a combination of the single-take and finding a story that would benefit from this approach.
“It was the same thing with Open Water where we were inspired by the Dogme 95 filmmakers, digital filmmaking was just coming into being at that point and we thought what kind of a story would benefit from that format? And also where hadn’t seen that format being taken? Which was to shoot in the water. Of course that was also a true story. So I think that we are turned on by challenging ourselves and hopefully pushing things and trying to present something a little different.”
Silent House came together quickly, Lau started writing the screenplay in June 2011 and filming wrapped in November. “Not having any editing to do made it possible to complete the film on such a short schedule.” There has been some controversy over whether the film is a single continuous take or not. This seems to be based on a misunderstanding of the current technical limitations of digital film, which would not allow for the shooting of a continuous 80-90 minute shot. Silent House is comprised of a number of very long takes, that when placed in sequence appear to make an unbroken take. “With most movies you shoot a lot of coverage and then spend a lot of time in the editing room. In this case we had very few shots, and at the end of the day very few useable takes. We pretty much knew what we were going to be using so essentially by the time we wrapped we had a picture locked.”
It may not be one unbroken take, but each shot had to end and begin in a proscribed way, camera movements controlled and based around the actors did not allow for improvisation or errors. Presumably there was a great deal of preparation involved? “Absolutely. We had 15 days to shoot, it was all about being prepared. The moment we got the location we put the script together. Obviously with no cutting, every single moment had to be accounted for in the script. So already the script was tailored very much to the precise location. Chris and I just started to run the movie, we started to choreograph the film over and over again, and then of course we brought on our DP and then we had a few weeks rehearsal period with the actors.”
It is inevitable that a film built around such unusual technical restrictions will attract a lot of comment and analysis on the technique of the mise-en-scene. Does Lau worry that having to discuss this in interviews may demystify the film for an audience? “Well... in terms of demystifying, one of the things we notice people focus on is ‘how many shots was it really?’ Which is not the point at all. When you are making a film in one shot, so many of the tools you usually have as a filmmaker you don’t have. We can’t control pacing, there is no editing, all of those decisions had to be made ahead of time.
“Really a film is about character and story. If you are paying attention to the technical then something is not quite right. The experience is a little bit different because of the way we approach it, but it shouldn’t be something that you are holding in your mind while you are watching the film.”
Lau wrote her script without the benefit of a copy of the original, but based on several viewings of the film. How did she approach the adaptation? “We obviously had the benefit of what we felt worked and didn’t work about the original.
“We were hired to remake the film... It’s tricky to give yourself the license and freedom to make something your own, and at the same time respect that there is material there that needs to be taken into account. So it was an interesting balance of holding some pieces of it and then banishing it. So that we could make it our own. I think that there are some fundamental differences between the two films. The character’s motivation and what happens are quite different.”
At the heart of the remake is lead actor Olsen. Despite being the youngest of the Olsen clan that includes twins Mary-Kate and Ashley, the actress silenced murmuring of nepotism with her debut performance earlier this year in Martha Marcy May Marlene. Here the success of the entire film rests on her shoulders, she is a constant presence onscreen. If she fails to convince in the role, the entire edifice collapses no matter how technically skilful it is. “No question about it” says Lau. “Our version of the film is really a portrait of a very traumatised and damaged being. So Lizzie was carrying that, she was having nightmares. In fact we used some of her nightmare material in the film.
“It was very challenging and very unusual on a number of levels. Not only because it was a very challenging character, a very fragmented character, but also the entire film is unfolding [from her] point of view, her actual experience of reality, in which she herself does not understand what is going on. She’s terrified.
“At the same time she is holding a lot of technical stuff. Because there is no cutting, no mistakes that can be made. The camera’s movements constantly had to be justified by her movements... She had to help with lighting. Sometimes she had to pick up a white cloth and shine her flashlight into that. Or she would have to shine her flashlight at our DP who would be covered in foil... She really was absolutely tremendous.
“Emotionally it was very, very hard, running these long takes over and over again. We had been looking for someone with theatre experience, in some ways it was harder than theatre, because in theatre when something goes wrong, or someone knocks over a chair, you keep going. [Here] the whole take would become useless we would have to start over again... It was extremely demanding of her.”
What does this single take style bring to a horror of thriller film? “I think that not being able to get away from a character... I think it builds a certain kind of intensity... I think that it does create a different kind of experience, but that is up to audiences to tell us. Being in real time allowed us to play with memory, to play with different periods of time to convey this character’s experience of reality. I felt it was a really interesting way to do that.”
And what other films did you look at when preparing to shoot? “Of course there is the one we’ve remade... [Hitchcock’s] Rope, which is very theatrical... there’s very few rooms, the cuts are really obvious. [Alexander Sukarov’s] Russian Ark which is an art film... We were challenged by making a film in this way, in this genre. Going in, we did of course watch those films, along with a lot of other films in the haunted house, home invasion genres, and psychological thrillers.
“I also looked at a lot of art.” Lau mentions artists such as Kiki Smith, Robert Gober, John Baldessari, Joel-Peter Witkin, and Dieter Appelt. “I would say I spent as much time looking at art as I did watching films... So much of this film is about the mind and the unconscious, and that is reflected in the production design. I studied mental disorders, I looked at Jungian material, archetypal material, which is very much in the film.”
Does this breadth of references from art house cinema and fine art mean that Kentis and Lau are fine artists that have fallen into making genre films more by accident than design? Lau laughs at the suggestion “Y’know we appreciate all the different approaches that exist... I suppose you’re right in that our tastes, our approach, leans more to independent film. I guess that is where we find a lot of material that is more innovative and just excites us more. We’re attracted to things that are a little different.”
Both Silent House and Open Water are films that present horrors that are almost Discovery Channel in terms of reality. Is these the sort of horror or thriller narratives that appeal to them as filmmakers? “For us what is interesting are these real life horrors. After Open Water we were approached to make a lot of horror movies, and we were not attracted to any of them.
“To me this is a real horror movie... In that sense it attracted us. I wouldn’t say that we would never do a movie that has supernatural elements, I’m always interested in the multidimensional experience of reality. So if I were to do a ghost movie, I think it would be really fun. Right now we have a couple of new projects and they are more thrillers, again they are based on true stories. You could say there is a pattern there.”
And what is the reality being explored in Silent House? NOTE: If you haven’t yet seen the remake of the original film you may want to avoid these details which take us into spoiler territory. “When we were approached to do this I was told that the original was based on a true story. The true story was basically about a house where there was a family, people were murdered and incest was involved. The original actually stayed away from that. They didn’t want to approach anything to do with incest.
“The first thing I asked myself was “what could possibly happen to someone that they could murder their own family members?” So I actually started to do a lot of research and of course a lot of people who are abused as children don’t become murderers, but a high proportion of murderers and murderers on death row have been abused as children. It is incredibly damaging. It was very painful to do the research on the incest, you want to just run away from the subject matter.
“Frankly I spent many nights crying reading this stuff. I really wanted to bring across the damage and pain that is wrought on somebody who has suffered this abuse. Through the film, because she is a traumatised mind, her whole sense of reality and time is fragmented, so a lot of these experiences that she is having, where she is hiding under tables, hiding under beds, are actually flashbacks that are now playing out in the present time as though they are real.”
Ultimately, Silent House will work best for an audience that has not seen the original film, the set up for the film’s events is almost identical to the remake meaning that it is impossible to avoid a sense of deja-vu if you have experienced the original. The fresh depths that Lau’s script brings to the characters are actually quite subtly developed. However it is technically a notch above the remake and Olsen’s performance more than justifies giving it a look.
• Read our review of Silent House
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