Les Âmes silencieuses

Hammer has resurrected, but taking into account the quality of their new stuff, I wonder if it shouldn’t have remained buried. With the exception of Woman in Black (which, given the director it had available, was actually below expectations), the only films they’ve delivered so far are average and pointless, which is exactly the case of The Quiet Ones. It has a fairly nice set design and style and the director does try to build an atmosphere, but despite all those efforts, it just didn’t make it for me, it was terribly boring. Really, I can’t remember when was the last time that I felt so incredibly bored with a horror film (that didn’t have zero ambitions). And this is not a movie where nothing happens, here “something” is happening all the time, the problem is how blandly it’s delivered: monotonous, unobtrusive, without any rhythm or escalation. And with a very worn out premise and uninteresting characters, to boot, which I don’t care a priori, provided the filmmakers can compensate it with something. But here there’s nothing, just an annoying blend of a classic film with period “found footage” images. An awful drag. (22/05/2014)

This horror starts quite promisingly. Then it flows and flows and you realize that there is nothing promising about it at all, and that all expectations have dissolved into something unnervingly bony. The film tries to appear surprising, different, but in reality it has nothing interesting, just that facade towards the audience. (22/07/2015)