The Unspoken is making it to theaters and VOD just before Halloween. It is a run-of-the-mill horror film. I’m personally not a fan of the genre, even though I’m aware that many people see spiritual value in many horror films because they deal with a world of unseen powers and with ultimate good and evil. Those qualities really don’t play out in this film.
The film opens in 1997 as a police officer arrives at a house where something terrible has happened. (This preface may be the most adrenaline filled scene in the film.) There is blood, a dead body, Satanic symbolism, a hysterical woman, but the family who lives there is nowhere to be found. The house seems to have a life and will of its own. Things open and close by themselves. Everything you would expect from a haunted house.
Skip ahead to the present day. Teen aged Angela (Jodelle Ferland) is offered a job doing some childcare for Adrian (Sunny Suljic), a seemingly disturbed boy who has just moved with his mother (Pascale Hutton) into the old house that has remained empty all these years. Angela has her own issues. Since she lost her mother, she has nightmares. Yet Adrian seems to like her. They play a bit, but Adrian never smiles or talks.
Meanwhile, some of the local teen boys have hidden their drug stash in the old house since no one ever goes in there. Now they have to sneak in and get it out. But Angela is beginning to discover that the house is beginning to act strangely again. When the group of boys sets out to get their drugs and leave no witnesses, the supernatural battle commences.
The ending twist to the story even manages to take away the good/evil spiritual dimension that horror films often allow us to consider. Instead we find that the strange things we saw had another explanation, but not a satisfying one.
Photos courtesy of Great Point Media
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