‘Cabin in the woods’ is a horror sub-genre that has been covered in debut feature films by directors like Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead, 1981), who went on to helm the three Spiderman films; and Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, 2002), who gained notoriety with his ‘torture porn’ duology, Hostel (2005) and Hostel II (2007). The recent entry into this field comes from a country better known for its soccer than scary cinema—Uruguay.
Like his illustrious predecessors, first-time director Gustavo Hernández’s La Casa Muda (2010), or The Silent House, while playing within the rules of the sub-genre, still manages to carve a niche for itself. On one hand, while Hernández has succumbed to a time-tested marketing ploy, namely, the ‘Based on true events’ gambit—used to varying degrees of success by films ranging from The Amityville Horror (1979 and 2005) to The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)—on the other, he has displayed an innate confidence in himself by adopting a format that is as rare as ‘true story’-based horror films are a dime a dozen.
What we are referring to here is the single-take, single-shot film that takes place in real time—the first example of which dates back to 1948. In that year, Alfred Hitchcock introduced the long-take approach to filmmaking in Rope (interestingly, Rope was also based on a real-life event—the Leopold-Loeb case), with mixed results. Purists will point out that Rope was not really a film with a single continuous shot, and they are right to do so. Hindered by the technology of the time, which only allowed film rolls that could shoot for a maximum of ten minutes, Hitchcock masterfully masked the cuts and other edits simply by blocking the screen (having a character walk in front of the camera, for example). Developments in camera and storing devices have now made the single-shot film more of a possibility, as can be seen in Mike Figgis’ experimental Timecode (2000), Aleksandr Sokurov’s awe-inspiring Russian Ark (2002), and Spiros Stathoulopoulos’ gritty PVC-1 (2007).
While the technique adopted by Hernández is novel, the same, unfortunately, cannot be said of the tale he tells (the screenplay was penned by Oscar Estévez based on a story by Hernández himself). The plot, based on an unsolved incident that occurred in a small village in Uruguay in the 1940s, unfolds with a young woman, Laura (Florencia Colucci) arriving at a dilapidated double-storied farmhouse with her father, Wilson (Gustavo Alonso). Néstor (Abel Tripaldi), the owner of the house, who is acquainted with both father and daughter, have entrusted them with the job of fixing it, so that ‘it looks nicer to prospective buyers’. The inquisitive Laura starts looking around the moment she arrives, only to find that all the windows of the house have been barricaded from the outside—to keep others out or to keep something in, one wonders.
As the father-daughter duo settle down on armchairs to pass the night, knowing that they will have to get up early in the morning if they are to finish refurbishing the house within the next two days, Laura’s curiosity is piqued when loud, heart-thumping noises are heard from the first floor. As her father goes up to investigate, Laura is left behind, armed only with a scythe and a lantern at her disposal (the electricity connection had long been cut off). And so she shall be, alone and afraid for almost the entire runtime of the film.
A temptation for the filmmaker must have been to go the ‘point-of-view’ way, as seen in other horror flicks like The Blair Witch Project (1999), REC (2007), Paranormal Activity (2007) and Paranormal Activity 2 (2010). But, Pedro Luque, the cinematographer of La Casa Muda, instead of allowing the camera to become Laura’s perpetual eyes, gradually shifts perspective, and makes it an accompaniment, instead, as she delves deeper and deeper into the bowels of the house in her desperate bid to get out. Moreover, unlike most other films of the genre, here, the protagonist behaves in a rational manner once she finds herself in mortal peril. She keeps looking for the house keys, tries the phone, and even barricades a door. That is why, when she breaks down and keeps sobbing and whimpering, we empathise with her predicament.
Hernández succeeds in gradually upping the ante as far as the creepiness of the atmosphere is concerned by resorting to some well-established norms in horror that most of his renowned counterparts tend to shun. Majority of the film is without any dialogue or even monologue because the only character on screen is Laura. When sounds do occur, other than the loud thumps, like those made by the clinking of a can or an ominous child’s rattle, they add to the overall sense of claustrophobia and disorientation. Mention must also be made of the eerie score by Hernán González that is far more effective than cheap ‘jump scare’ and ‘boo’ tactics.
However, La Casa Muda is not without its flaws. Certain parts of it remind us of films as varied as the Thai spook fest Shutter (2004), the French-Romanian home invasion flick Ils (2006), and even Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954). Then, there is the obvious gripe as to why a self-professed ‘real time’ film should have an editor (Hernández himself) credited. The biggest issue has to be the film’s conclusion that raises more queries about what preceded it than provides an answer to. There is a post-credit sequence, as well, but it appears more as a tagged-on device to attain the duration requisite of a feature-length film than serving as any value addition.
Having said that, La Casa Muda is still a commendable effort, which should not be adjudged based on the fact that even though most of the film-going fraternity is still to watch the original, Hollywood has already bastardised it in the form of a remake that has premiered at the Sundance Film Festival; but on the basis of the point that on a miniscule budget of $6,000 a greenhorn director had decided to try his hand at something that can be a daunting task for even the most accomplished of filmmakers.
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