The Unheard

The Unheard (2023) is a movie that was recently added to Shudder. The storyline follows a young lady who went def shortly after losing her mother. She decides to join an experiment that may cure her lost hearing. As her hearing starts coming back she starts having strange dreams of what happened to her mom...and when she wakes up she keeps experiencing things from her dreams. What happened to her mom and what is this experiment doing to her?

This movie is directed by Jeffrey A. Brown (The Beach House) and stars Lachlan Watson (Only the Good Survive), Nick Sandow (Orange is the New Black), Brendan Meyer (The Guest) and Shunori Ramanathan (The Big Sick).

This premise had a lot of potential and the acting is actually pretty good; unfortunately, the horror elements are lacking. The use of noise just isn't scary. The first kill was okay, but elements of that kill was used throughout the movie leaving me wanting more. The backstory wasn't as impactful as hoped and the ending was just okay

Overall, this is an average to below average addition to the horror genre. I would score this a 4/10 and recommend skipping it.

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.

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 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 actually really liked the concept of this film. Kind of like a supernatural, sci fi, horror, thriller. All my favorite things. It starts off well, builds the lead and the back story. The audience gets invested in her and the story.

Here's the thing though, the middle is rough to get thru. Its repetitive, meandering and the plot just stalls for the most part. There's no payoffs and I just could barely keep my eyes open (long day at work before watching).

The other issue is typical horror trope bad character decisions. You'll know when you see them and you might even yell at your TV. I did. Although there are issues, if you can stomach the middle it's a pretty cool movie. The acting isn't great but it was a good attempt at a complex (back and forth in time) story. 5/10.