Review: Silent Retreat (2013)

Silent Retreat

IMDB rate: 6,1

Genre: Monster

I got send the screener of Silent Retreat and I was already impressed with the trailer. Trailers don't say much though, half of the horror movies have the best trailer ever while the movie sucks balls. I was a bit scared of this happening when watching the trailer of Silent Retreat. Luckily, that wasn't the case. It really was a good movie, and I was very impressed by it. 

Storyline taken from IMDB:

Janey is sent to a silent retreat in the middle of the woods for rehabilitation, only to discover that the men who run it are brainwashing women to be quiet and submissive, and is she breaks the rules, she'll find out what lurks beyond the trees..

The movie starts off very tensive and in my opinion it was an excellent scene. The acting was good, the  images were beautifully shot and the music was chosen excellently. A great start for the movie I would say. I really was drawn into the movie because of this beginning for some reason.

There is hardly any dialogue so it's very difficult to keep the viewers interested by just using emotions, signs and music. There was dialogue when it was needed, when there wasn't dialogue there were emotions shown by frowning or smiling to know what was going on. It was done perfectly right in my opinion, it kept me interested. This way of acting does require certain skills and I think that most actors performed quite well, without saying anything. I wasn't very much impressed with the main actress though (Chelsea Jenish), I thought she tried a bit too hard or something.

Speaking of the dialogue, brilliant contrast between the music and a specific bloody scene.

The location is very well chosen, it seems far from the outside world and the fact that their 'rooms' are actually just cabins make this even more look like so. For the storyline though I don't think that this would be a very helpful teaching method. They can walk out of the cabin whenever they want, they just have to time it right. Also, if they walked through the woods (assuming they avoided walking into the creature) instead of near the road there's no way that these guys will find them every again. 

The creature is only shown clearly at the end of the movie, which is what almost every movie does. In some cases it works, in some it doesn't. I think that Silent Retreat waited just long enough with showing the monster. Each 'attack scene' there was shown a little bit more of this creature and what it was attracted to. It did keep me interested to know whatever was hiding in the woods. 

To describe the creature I would say that it looked like a mix between the Jeepers Creepers guy and a creature from The Descent, but a bit more fashionable with it's fur thing. 

Now, I loved the whole idea of not being able to speak. It's a great concept and it leads to interesting outcomes. With a creature terrorizing this bunch it does make it a bit more interesting. Another nice touch is that the creature is attracted by noise, it obviously fits the concept. The only thing that I disliked about this movie was the ending, it was a bit weird and didn't make much sense to me. It was a bit opposite from what the rest of the movie claimed. Also, a bit of a background story for the main characters would have been nice. Since they couldn't do it by telling, perhaps a flashback? That would've been nice.

I really liked Silent Retreat, it's a good concept with some nice touches to it. The acting is good, there are some beautifully images and the music is well chosen. I was interested through the entire movie, because it was something different from what I watch usually. 

My personal rate: 7,5/10