“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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