The Unheard

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.

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.

The film comes with an epilepsy warning, and oh boy does it need one. It's not just the odd scene either, to various degrees of intensity, it has the effects through out the entire film. So it's really hard to avoid. So honestly listen to that warning.

If I'm honest I don't think they added to the film either.

It's a slow burn, but it does keep you interested for a bit, but I don't think the pay off was that great. It was okay, but I thought the rest of the film was better than the end.

I think it had some really great concepts in there, like sound on a different frequency being heard by the previously deaf character.

I think think it's probably worth a watch overall.

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 (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.