“The Unheard” Movie Review

 

“The Unheard”

Movie Review

 

Jeffrey A. Brown directed the film. The Unheard was written by Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen and stars Lachlan Watson, Michele Hicks, Brendan Meyer, Nick Sandow, and Shunori Ramanathan. 20-year-old Chloe Grayden, played by Lachlan Watson, returns to her family's previous Cape Cod vacation home and starts to experience auditory hallucinations that appear to be connected to her mother's mysterious disappearance after receiving an experimental operation to repair her damaged hearing.

Chloe contracted meningitis as a toddler and spent six months in a coma. As she awoke, she discovered she had lost her hearing. More crucially, she had also lost her mother, who was played by Michele Hicks. Throughout those months, she vanished without a trace. She and her father, played by Bill Sage, relocated to Maine, where she has attempted to put the past behind her and go on with her life.

Now a young lady, she has returned to Massachusetts and her family's summer home in Wellfleet in order to pursue an experimental procedure that may restore her hearing. The doctor advises her that "regaining awareness can be quite unpleasant," and being confronted with recollections of her missing mother is no exception.

We follow Chloe as she cleans out her house, discovering old VHS tapes of family incidents involving her mother, and having unpleasant encounters with old pals Joshua and his mother Ellen, as well as Hank, an ex-cop and current harbourmaster.

What distinguishes this from other comparable homecoming scenarios is how The Unheard uses what is heard, and how, When she uses transcription software, or when we hear what other characters hear, we sometimes hear everything normally. But much of what we hear is, like Chloe, unclear, twisted noise. Until her mother's voice becomes audible.

But The Unheard is more than just a psychologically charged ghost story. Forty minutes into the film, two events occur that alter the trajectory of the story. First and foremost, Chloe's hearing is restored in a scene that conveys her joy without resorting to cliches. A black-gloved killer slashes a woman's throat, launching the film into giallo territory.

It's instantly clear that this is connected to her mother, and some expository speech telling Chloe that this is simply the latest in a long string of disappearances confirms it. The script tries to merge the two plot threads, but they never quite work. It doesn't help that a significant amount of time is spent on a sequence between Chloe and Dr. Lynch, played by Shunori Ramanathan, that presents intriguing possibilities that the writers very instantly abandon.

The Unheard also has difficulties in concealing the killer's identity among such a small group. Despite half-hearted attempts to mislead the audience, almost everyone will immediately recognize who it is. It's as though the writers themselves realized it was meaningless.

As a result, the picture starts strong but soon abandons an intriguing plot in favor of one that isn't quite as successful and begins to lose steam. And with a running time of more than two hours, that is not a good thing. It does rally to provide a decent chase, but the end payoff is as predictable as the identity of the perpetrator. It's also the cause of the warning regarding flashing lights at the beginning of the film.

The Unheard might have worked well as a 90-minute ghost story. Perhaps a good serial killer flicks with a larger cast. But, as an attempt to blend the two, it manages to be both overlong and underwhelming.

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