Laura (Florencia Colucci) and her father Wilson (Gustavo Alonso) come to an abandoned house to shear the garden since the owner Néstor (Abel Tripaldi) intends to sell the house. During the night, Laura hears noises on the second floor and her father goes upstairs to calm Laura down.

Sooner Laura finds Wilson bleeding and she sees someone with a knife in the house. When she flees, she finds Néstor driving on the lonely secondary road and she tells that there is a stranger in the house. Néstor forces Laura to return to the house with him and he is also stabbed. Laura stays with Néstor and they learn who the killer is.

I had a great expectation and curiosity with "La Casa Muda", which is the Uruguayan candidate to the Best Foreign Language Film category of the Oscar 2012 and also presented in Cannes. Unfortunately it is a boring, disappointing and predictable film. From the first very first scene, I found that something was wrong with Laura, but the twist is awfully flawed. In the end of the credits, there is a long scene of Laura walking and having a conversation with her daughter Sofi. Last but not the least, "The Circle" (2005) with the cult actress Angela Bettis, is a digital movie shot entirely in one take and in real time. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "A Casa" ("The House")

Note: There are many fake reviews promoting this flick. Click on the name of reviewers promoting "La Casa Muda" usually after a bad review and see how many of them has only one review published in IMDb.

I don't know if the movie really was shot only in one (long) take or not. I know that it has been done before, "Russian Arc" being one of the most elaborate movies to have done so (though I haven't seen that one yet). The question is, if this is more than just an experiment? And isn't it better to cut away to something else sometimes?

The story is pretty straightforward (no pun intended) and might not give away were it is going from the get-go, but if you follow it (again with the pun),it will eventually become very clear, what lies behind those walls. Of course if you have seen a genre movie like this, you might be on to where it is actually heading. I can't tell you how much less you will enjoy the movie, if you come up with the solution, before it is revealed. I can tell you, that for a "single-take" movie it does and sounds pretty good though

I picked this up with the impression that it was a ghost movie, and hoping that it would be nothing like "Paranormal Activity". Having seen "The Silent House" ("La Casa Muda") now, I must say that I am genuinely impressed, despite it not actually being a ghost movie as per se.

The story in "The Silent House" does lay out the mood for a great ghost story and it is good at building up suspense and having a spooky atmosphere. And it is filmed in a dark, rather rundown and disarrayed house, which only adds to the spooky atmosphere. The story is about Laura and her father who have been hired to fix up the facade of an old, rundown house and having to spend the night in the old, empty house, but the house has a dark secret...

What was really impressive about this movie was that it was shot in one long take, without cuts and editing, that really impressed me. Especially because it must have had added a lot of pressure on the actors (well actress in particular) as there was no room for mistakes and do-overs. But they pulled it off so nicely, it was really a treat to watch this movie.

Also, "The Silent House" sent me through a couple of impressions of the movie, starting out with interest and a hope to be scared, but then when you find out about the photos in the attic and who it was that did the strange things in the house, i started to think the storyline was so implausible and sort of stupid, because what they had shown prior up to that made no sense. But then as the credits started rolling and you see all the photos, the truth about the story and what happened in the house dawns on you, shedding a whole new light on the entire movie, and that totally turned me around in my opinion again, turning to awe and amazement. And the ending where Laura walked through the forest and out onto the field, well that was really a good ending.

This Uruguayan thriller was really a surprise of a movie, and I am really glad that I bought it and added it to my DVD collection. If you like movies that leave you with a lasting impression and something to think about, then you should definitely watch "The Silent House".