‘The Unheard’ review: A creepy mystery that uses silence in the most terrifying way

A common complaint of horror movies is that sound is relied upon far too heavily. Creeping chords to build tension, a sudden burst of noise to emphasise a jump scare — these are the oldest tricks in the horror movie playbook.

As the title might suggest, The Unheard is a film that relies heavily upon sound, too. But rather than wielding it as a lazy shock device, director Jeffrey A. Brown does so in a specific way that goes hand in hand with the film’s story — and creates a truly terrifying effect.

What's The Unheard about?

Chloe (Lachlan Watson), a young woman who lost her hearing at the age of eight after contracting meningitis, travels to her home town to undertake an experimental procedure that may be able to restore it. But staying at the house she grew up in brings back memories of her mother's disappearance. These recollections worsen as Chloe's hearing returns, as she begins experiencing auditory hallucinations — her mother's voice, half-lost in static like the childhood home movies she keeps watching on the house's old VHS player.

All of which is creepy enough, but then there's the lights that keep coming on in the seemingly abandoned house next door at night, plus there's the disappearance of yet another local woman who vanishes after a shift.

As you might have guessed from that description, Brown's movie is a bit of a genre mish-mash. The setup sounds like a Black Mirror episode, the hallucinations and isolation are straight-up horror, and the disappearances blend it all together with a kind of mystery/crime/thriller element. It's a combination that could easily start tripping over itself, but somehow it keeps a steady, confident footing. Between Brown's perfectly unnerving direction, a tight script from Michael and Shawn Rasmussen and a well-acted story, The Unheard crackles through its two-hour runtime with scares and tension aplenty.

The Unheard uses sound to truly unnerving effect.

Almost the entire first act of the film takes place in silence. Or rather, not so much a silence as an approximation of Chloe's near-total deafness, where sounds are muted and dampened as though we're experiencing them underwater. The effect of this, as Chloe creeps around her childhood home at night and flashes her torch between the trees that gather around the lakefront like intruders, is one of suffocation. The silence is ominous because we're constantly waiting for something to break it. This makes The Unheard's soundscape far more unnerving than a typical horror score, because everything is infused with the tension of a held breath — and when it's occasionally broken by Chloe's memories or her mother's distorted voice, the result is chilling.

Are there any weaknesses?

Although it's a great film, The Unheard isn't perfect. The story treads a fine line between reality and the supernatural which is effective throughout, but isn't necessarily resolved as well as I might have liked. A slight lack of resolution is present in other areas, too. There's a side plot with Dr Lynch (Shunori Ramanathan) that fizzles out towards the end, and the reveal of the true threat — and specifically, its motivations — is perhaps kept a little too foggy.

But then again, maybe foggy is best. Rather than coming away fully satisfied, The Unheard left me in a similar state to Chloe as she watches her family's movies on the VHS player — with a sense of something hiding between the frames that I might have missed, and a desire to go back and watch it all again to search for clues.

The Unheard is available to stream on Shudder from March 31.