Shudder Secrets: The Unheard Explained

After the very creepy and unsettling feature The Beach House, director Jeffrey A. Brown is back with his latest, The Unheard. Written by Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen, the guys behind Crawl and John Carpenter’s The Ward, The Unheard doesn’t feature the cosmic terrors of the The Beach House. Instead, its hair-raising premise focuses on a young deaf woman, Chloe (Lachlan Watson), who undergoes an experimental treatment to regain her hearing. As a result, she faces auditory hallucinations, specifically eerie voices from beyond the grave.

The Unheard is a much slower burn than Brown’s previous film. That said, in the last act, it really ramps up, and before that, it has plenty of unnerving scenes featuring old VHS tapes and voices from the great beyond. There’s some pure nightmare fuel here. In some ways, The Unheard takes bigger swings while still maintaining a more focused concept. The film also anchors itself in how the protagonist deals with grief after her mother’s disappearance.

Some light spoilers below.

The Unheard, Auditory Hallucinations, and Voices from the Beyond

Almost as soon as the film begins, Chloe enlists herself as part of a project run by Dr. Lynch (Shunori Ramanathan) in hopes of regaining her hearing. Each night, she takes eardrops. It’s never quite fully explained what effects the drops are supposed to have or how they work, but with nothing to lose, Chloe engages in the experiment. She also isolates herself by staying at a vacation home that her parents owned, where her mom disappeared.

The sound design in this film deserves accolades. Until the experiment works and Chloe regains her hearing, we’re fully immersed and centered in her world because of the sound design. For the first quarter of the film, everything sounds low and muted, pulling us into Chloe’s point of view and allowing us to experience the world through her perspective. It’s an incredibly powerful aspect of the film. The moment her hearing returns, it’s equally as moving. Imagine suddenly hearing birds chirp or music humming over the radio. Chloe feels utter jubilation the moment that her hearing returns. It’s a true joy to witness as a viewer, especially considering what the film does with sound from the outset.

However, Chloe’s pleasure is soon dashed. She starts hearing strange voices in the vacation home. More specifically, she presses her ear to the floor and constantly hears her mom’s voice echoing from the floor below. While it sounds garbled and at times, staticky, it’s clear that it’s her mom. Whatever the experiment did caused Chloe to hear the voices of the deceased. She also watches crackly VHS tapes and home videos featuring her mother, trying to piece together why and how she disappeared.

White Noise, EVPS, or Something Else?

Though the film never names what Chloe experiences, it possibly can be considered White Noise or Electronic Voice Phenomenon. EVPs are voices discovered in recording media. Often, Chloe hears her mom’s voice on the TV or through the radio. The only exception is when she presses her ear to the ground in a room upstairs, which gives hints as to where exactly her mom disappeared and who was responsible.

Another character, Joshua (Brendan Meyer), Chloe’s childhood friend, eventually explains to her that something called and pulled her back to the area. He has a hidden room she discovers, filled with various radios operating on all different frequencies. He explains that whatever happened with Chloe’s hearing, she’s able to pick up on frequencies that most people can’t. The experiment enhanced her hearing in a way, but it comes at a steep price, causing ringing and bleeding in her ears.

This concept is pretty solid throughout the film. Meanwhile, moments when the dead speak to Chloe through crackly TV static or over the radio, are downright chilling and unsettling. This isn’t a movie that relies on blood and guts, nor does it contain some of the The Beach House‘s body horror. Still, Brown’s film isn’t light on the frights. There are moments here that are uncanny and terrifying. These sequences of analog horror are spooky and bone-chilling. You want to pry Chloe away from the TV before she pops in another one of those spectral VHS tapes, featuring distorted images of her mom.

The Unheard’s Address of Grief

Besides some of the ghastly sequences, The Unheard works so well because it has a very human story. Chloe is 20, trying to figure out her life, specifically what happened to her mom. Her mom’s fate and the man responsible are fully revealed in the last 30 minutes. Prior to that, Chloe does everything she can to try to piece together her mom’s story and solve the disappearance.

This is very much a film that also addresses grief. Chloe sits in front of the TV constantly, popping in one VHS tape after the other. These tapes are her connection to the past before her mom died. It’s a way to call her back from the dead, so to speak. Further, it allows her to relive her childhood, before her hearing loss and before her mom vanished. The VHS tapes froze those happier moments in time, allowing Chloe to revisit them. This also very much feels like her journey. Chloe’s dad is only present through texts and phone calls to check up on her, but Chloe leaves it to herself to figure out her mom’s story and to deal with the fallout and grief in her own way.

After The Beach House and now The Unheard, Brown has some serious genre chops. While a slow burn, his latest is an assured feature with some truly spine-tingling moments. The film will stream on Shudder starting March 31. To keep up with the streaming service’s latest content, follow my Shudder Secrets column.