The Unheard

I think unheard has a great plot and a lot going for it. It had all the right elements and could have been so much better, but it ends up being a tedious and slow thriller. It also suffers from an identity crisis and doesn't know if it wants to be a serial killer movie, supernatural or a family drama.

The film is about a young woman staying alone at her family's cabin while she participates in an experimental procedure to try and regain her hearing she lost at 8 years old. The procedure is successful and she starts hearing things beyond the grave.

The acting of the main character is too subtle and relaxed. She makes some stupid decisions by the end. Acting against normal flight or fight insights. By the second half all the characters acting and dialogue became really strange and out of character.

There are aspects of this film that are creepy, but because of the slow pace and confusing narrative, it doesn't work. The film is over two hours long and doesn't establish much in that slightly above-average runtime.

Overall, I give this movie 5 stars. There was a lot this movie had going for it and had some original ideas I liked.

Warning, the last several minutes of the film are jarring, the visuals and noise become extremely erratic (hence the warning at the beginning for those prone to seizures).

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.

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.

I thought this looked like an interesting premise, but the plot meandered a bit as time went on. Too many rabbit trails along the way to the real meat of the story, which was pretty bland once you got there.

The overuse of the flashing, distorted TV images was SUPER annoying and the audio was impossible to decipher. At first I didn't know if that was deliberate because of the main character's hearing problems, but I turned on closed captioning and saw that the distorted videos that kept popping up (ad nauseum) actually had dialogue in there.

Had I not had CC enabled, for example, I don't think I would have guessed that at the end, the audio was saying "Say happy fourth of July" over and over. It was so muddied and indistinct. And made no sense... maybe that was a callback to an earlier part of her watching those fuzzy home movies and I just missed it because it was, as my review title says, unwatchable (and inaudible).

The baddy in the movie was entirely predictable and the ending was just "meh" and left you kind of hanging anyway. It's not like I need it all wrapped up in a neat little bow, but there was literally zero denouement, nothing. Just "okay, baddy is dead" and roll credits. Yawn.

Every character was basically two dimensional... you see them on screen, think you're getting some back story and getting to know them, and then they vanish forever, never to be seen again. What's up with that? Screen filler and time padding, that's all.

At best, this story could have been a somewhat interesting half hour twilight zone'ish episode, but they strrrrreetcheeeeed it out to 2 hours, and it shows.