The Unheard (2023) by Jeffrey A. Brown

Director: Jeffrey A. Brown

Year: 2023

Country: USA

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Supernatural

Plot:

Suffering from hearing loss, a woman undergoes an experimental procedure to implant a device that will help restore it and retreats to her childhood home to heal up, but when she starts to get notices of something unearthly contacting her she tries to piece together the messages with her mother's death.

Review:

This was a decent enough if somewhat problematic effort. Among the positives here come from the intricate storyline that brings about some rather off-beat elements into this type of story. The central setup involving the deaf woman undergoing the procedure and trying to navigate the world for the first time as an adult who can hear the world around her makes this intriguing enough, especially once the infusion of bizarre screeches and static-y noises start punctuating her attempts at recovery. This sets the film in motion towards a solid ghost story alongside a serial killer stalking the area killing off young women which allows for a series of solid and decent-enough stalking scenes followed up with some brutal killings to hammer everything home that gets tied together through a series of reveals that feature some decent connections for how it all works. This gives the film a solid grounding for the unnatural atmosphere of the investigation sequences while also allowing enough suspenseful stalkings with the bloodshed to be worthwhile in places.

There are some big issues here that hold this one down. The main drawback on display is the absurdly overlong and unnecessary running time that comes about mainly because the film is mindlessly repetitive in the middle segments. Endlessly going through the same process involving her shuffling around the house maintaining it, finding tapes of her family when she was a child, or dealing with the other issues surrounding the procedure which all combine together into running this section of the film into an absurdly long time. The lack of genre thrills on display here when not dealing with anything of grave circumstances as the lack of action makes this one quite dull, especially with the constantly-flashing strobe lightings and screeching sound-effects utilized by the videotapes or whenever the killer strikes which produces much more of a drama feel here than anything.

The other drawback to the film is a decidedly chaotic and scattered storyline that may have some great ideas but also provides some random elements as a result. Most of that is due to not knowing what it wants to be and filling in tons of unwanted space trying to do so, with this ranging from a drama about her coming to terms with the recovered ability to hear once again, a haunted house story about the strange bumps and noises she encounters, and a serial killer film as the madman strikes various women on the outskirts of the story. Since there’s so much going on here, and combined with the repetitive nature of these storylines hindering much of the opportunity to go through with the build-up of this storyline, it all comes off as predictable and not very surprising who the killer is or what their motivation was. These make for a watchable if heavily flawed genre effort.

Overview: **/5

Not without some big issues but likable enough for what it is, there’s some big factors on display here that manage to overcome these positive factors and manage to make the film more problematic than anything. Give it a shot if you’re intrigued by the concept matter or are fans of the creative crew but most others who are turned off by the negatives on display should heed caution.