BY RICH CROSS
A solitary young woman returns to her empty lakeside family home while she undergoes groundbreaking medical treatment that might restore the hearing she lost to meningitis as a child. Chloe prefers her own company and, after what might be a life-changing operation, spends her time alone recuperating. Finding a battered video player and some sketchy VHS tapes, she watches home movies from her childhood, memories of a happier time when her mother was still alive. But as she starts to pick up sounds, Chloe is increasingly unnerved: worried that the house is being watched and that she’s hearing voices seemingly inside her head.
For the first half of its two-hour run-time, The Unheard impresses. Lachlan Watson is excellent as the self-possessed but brittle Chloe, carrying large parts of the film alone. The cinematography by Owen Levelle expertly teases out the unsettling in everyday settings, delivering some excellent visuals, while director Jeffrey A. Brown allows time for an atmosphere of growing unease to permeate proceedings. Music by Roly Porter and sound design by Colin Alexander provides a powerful but unobtrusive soundscape. It’s to the credit of co-writers Michael and Shawn Rasmussen that the audience is left wondering where the film might turn next at the halfway point.
Unfortunately, that’s when things start to unravel. The pacing slows before some jarring plot developments skew the tone. Brown picks up the momentum as the finale builds, but at quite some cost. The premise’s intriguing aspects are bulldozed by a derivative slasher-in-the-house showdown. It’s not the ending that the film deserves, and it ignores everything that makes Chloe a recognisable and relatable character.
THE UNHEARD is available on Shudder.
