The Unspoken

If you want spend a good time with your girl/boy-friend watch this movie for fun time. It's a common movie of haunted house, freak characters, bad boys, and move-it-self objects. The plot began typically when a single mother and her son moved on to the creepy house. Then typically the mother hired a baby sister to care her "mute" boy. After that begin strange and rare events who in the develop of the plot has been linked with past stories of the characters and the town. The movie has moments of horror and suspense. Isn't a great plot but it's simple and short movie that gives a surprise ending.

You know the routine by now: a young family moved into a house with a history and before long are assailed by all manner of weird goings on in the form of spectres and sinister events. It soon transpires that the past is very much present and the new tenants will soon have a fight for survival on their hands...

THE UNSPOKEN - which I saw under the alternate title of THE HAUNTING OF BRIAR HOUSE - is an extremely routine low budget horror film from Canada. The plotting is entirely familiar and the scare sequences well choreographed in advance. Even worse, there's an obvious murder mystery aspect which makes things feel even more stereotypical (anyone who's seen the Daniel Craig film DREAM HOUSE will know what to expect here).

A couple of gory moments are stirred into the mix but the ultimate pay-off is disappointing. Watch out for Neal McDonough, cameoing as the sheriff.

There's an awful lot wrong with 'The Unspoken'. As I was watching it I was thinking to myself that it was one of the worst horror movies I've seen - and I've seen a lot of terrible horror movies. The amount of jump scares that turn out to be absolutely nothing is quite ridiculous. Jump scares are fine if there is a genuine reason for them relating to the story. Occasionally a misleading one can be thrown in, I accept that. But when there have been about 10-15 of them and none of them have turned out to be anything more than a cat jumping out of nowhere, it gets pretty frustrating. The other main problem I had, was that other than the opening scene, almost the entire movie happens during daylight hours. There's nothing scary about daylight. I don't think there's a film maker alive who could pull off an effective horror movie filmed entirely during the day. This was absolute amateur hour from director Sheldon Wilson.

The acting is bad, the dialogue is bad and the story is completely boring. There was almost nothing good going for it. Then along came the ending. It's a very interesting ending that I happened to quite like. I'm not talking 'The Usual Suspects' or 'Memento' type quality, and maybe it just seemed like a better ending because everything else had been so terrible and I wanted to like something about it. Regardless though, I liked it. In fact it bumped it up from being a '3' to a '4'. Is the horrible lead up worth it for the ending though? I'm going to stick with a no on that one.

A single mother and her mute 9 year old son move into a house with a sinister and mysterious past. They hire a local girl as a baby sitter and things start to get spooky, plus a small gang of local drug dealers blight them. This is a perfect example of why the majority of modern, 21st Century horror movies are so instantly forgettable. We get cheap jump scare after cheap jump scary, none of which are actually scary and it all rather quickly gets boring. The local thugs are somewhat ridiculous and unconvincing, would they really resort to murder in such a small town community just to get their stash? I think not. And then there's the ending, no spoiler from me other than to say I found it incredibly corny. 5/10 from me, perhaps a tad generous. This is by no means a bad movie, more like a reasonable time filler that I will have forgotten about by tomorrow and certainly wouldn't watch again. The film does have two good gore scenes and the acting was on the whole sufficient.

I recommend this movie absolutely. There are similarities to other movies like Amityville, which is also cited in the movie. The director and at the same time writer of the movie must be a fan of Amityville movies just like me. The opening is very good and very promising, so that it makes you curious for more. The acting is good, Neal McDonough is the sheriff and the main actress Jodelle Ferland is known for The Tall Man (2012). Before I watched it, I thought it's about a ghost house. Was I right? It was not only this. By the way the special effects are also good. Altogether it is a 6.2 or 6.3 movie for me.