The Unheard

If the description wouldn't have detailed the premise of this film...I would have had no idea what was going on.

Sure, it's pretty obvious that she miraculously regained her hearing, as a result of an experimental medical procedure, after losing it to meningitis as a child.

But as for the rest of the plot...it's not exactly evident.

Less that there is a serial killer operating in the area.

And the he has her in his sights.

The whole supernatural element- and her supposed psychic abilities- manifest in both bizarre and confusing ways.

To the point where I'm not exactly sure how they helped drive the storyline forward.

The whole thing is rather slow burning...and plods on for much longer than it needs to.

Meaning that it's a bit too bloated for what it is.

That being said, the acting- particularly from the lead actress- is decent enough to keep you engaged.

Even though the whole thing is rather boring.

Up until it's somewhat disturbingly violent final act.

However, that's not exactly enough to safe it from it's inherent mediocrity.

No doubt, the concept is kind of intriguing.

However, the film itself is really quite passable.

And probably would have been more interesting if she was just deaf the whole time.

Especially considering the ending is kind of ridiculous.

Either way...it definitely did not need to be over 2 hours long.

2.5 out of 10.

Chloe Grayden (Lachlan Watson) undergoes an experimental treatment for a chance to restore her hearing. She goes back to her family vacation home and starts hearing things. There is the case of her missing mother.

As a concept, this is really interesting and has great potential. I can imagine how odd auditory incidents could intermingle with solving a family mystery. This movie fails to achieve that. It insists on doing weird visual representations for hearing things. It's distracting non-sense. The movie loses its way and I stopped caring. This is a cool concept being wasted and everybody's time as well.

The Unheard has a runtime of 2 hours and 5 minutes. It feels three times that long. The main reason for that is this film has no idea what it wants to be. Is it a body horror? A psychological thriller? A ghost story? A serial killer movie? Well, it tries to be all this and succeeds at none. The movie suffers from its runtime, it could have used a rewrite with an emphasis on choosing one direction and also an editor that wasn't afraid to speak up. A decent cast is basically wasted in a boring mess of a movie that is bloated beyond reason. Oh, and if you are epileptic or suffer from motion sickness, stay far away from it. The director really thinks strobe lights and high frequency noise is cool. It's not.

I liked the basic scientific/supernatural ideas offered here, and I would have found the film a lot more interesting if it stuck with and developed them. Why has this girl become attuned to otherworldly messages and how can electronic devices be used to monitor supernatural phenomena? That's good stuff. Unfortunately, the thriller aspect of the film is the least successful, and that becomes obvious as those elements begin to dominate the plot in the third act. If you can't figure out who's behind a series of murders in the area in just a few minutes, then you're a really bad judge of character.

The film starts with a warning that some scenes could induce seizures. And, it stays true to that assertion to the end.

Lachlan Watson plays Cloe, who is a depressed and deaf young adult who undergoes experimental surgery to regain her hearing, which was lost when she had a childhood meningitis infection. As she returns to her childhood home for recovery, she regains her hearing. Soon after she starts to hear ghostly whispers, garbles, and eerie sounds particularly when she watches the old VCR tapes from her earlier childhood.

Lachlan Watson is an upcoming Hollywood star in the making. From an early age, she started taking small parts in the Burning Coal theater and later in the Triangle theater. She played in the "Chilling Adventures of Sabrina" and the second season of "Chucky"

The concept is interesting. It is more of a drama with a bit of horror and not the other way around. I think that extremely corrupted and distorted video images and sounds made storytelling much less compelling and a lot more confusing.