[Film Review] The Unheard (2023)

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the core concept for Shudder Original The Unheard is a familiar one. Starring television horror alum Lachlan Watson (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Chucky), the film opens on profoundly deaf student Chloe Grayden (Watson) as she undergoes an experimental clinical trial in the hopes of regaining her hearing.

Left to recuperate from the procedure alone while she prepares to sell her family’s old, isolated lake house, Chloe’s reality starts to falter, as she begins experiencing auditory hallucinations connected to her mother’s disappearance years earlier. 

The basic building blocks of this premise will undoubtedly flag as similar to those of Mike Flanagan’s 2016 slasher Hush, which also features a young, deaf protagonist living alone in the woods being terrorised by malevolent outside forces - right down to the childhood hearing loss by way of meningitis. Likewise, repeated visual and audible hallucinations within the primary location of the house that stem from unsettling, static-y old video footage of Chloe’s mother brings to mind shades of fellow low-budget Shudder success Skinamarink. However, to The Unheard’s credit, it follows these well-trodden paths with a quite literally quiet confidence.

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Much of the success of the film’s early minutes owes its thanks to sound design. Fading in and out of range depending on whether Chloe is alone or with other, hearing characters, the muffled soundscape offers the viewer a compelling insight into her world. Conversations can only be accessed by use of live transcription software on her phone, and the flickering of Chloe’s gaze between its screen and her peers goes a long way to impressing her point of view on us. Watson, who is hearing, delivers an understated performance that centres their character’s disability. The sheer joy experienced when the procedure first begins to work is keenly felt, and the scenes where Chloe traverses her house experiencing all the commonplace sounds previously denied to her, clanging pots together and pressing her ear against the microwave as popcorn slowly rotates, are some of the film’s most engaging moments.

Sadly, The Unheard’s narrative begins to fail almost exactly in tandem with the resurgence of Chloe’s hearing. The immersive audio portraying Chloe’s deaf experience is lost, along with the unique charm it brought to the opening half, disappointingly leaving us with a far more ordinary, languid horror. Clocking in at more than two hours, the film would have also benefited from a shorter running time. Murky environmental shots, while technically competent, seem to be inserted for padding, and a cutaway sequence to an unnamed woman’s murder by an all too human killer drains any residual tension from Chloe’s purportedly supernatural disturbances.

A succession of further missteps, including the reveal that suspicious childhood friend Joshua (Brendan Meyer) has been spying on our protagonist to seemingly prove she ‘lied’ about her deafness, and an aborted, unfounded attempt from Chloe to hook up with her doctor (Shunori Ramanathan) during a hallucination-induced house call, see the narrative stumble as we reach the climatic reveal. Though making a loose attempt to link the villain to Chloe’s bleeding ears and the mysterious sounds by way of a ghost or supernatural entity that he can also hear, The Unheard’s mystery boils down to a creepy, serial-murdering neighbour (Nick Sandow), who killed Chloe’s mother and now intends to take her out, too. 

There are glimmers of a better film throughout The Unheard, but regrettably it culminates in an unsatisfying end to what promised to be an intriguing, if not entirely original thriller. 

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