TheLittleSongbird Saw 'Silent Retreat' being fond of horror/thriller regardless of budget (even if not my favourite genre), and the cover was cool. Was less taken by the concept though, which sounded ridiculous. Being behind on my film watching and reviewing, with a long to watch and review list that keeps getting longer, it took me a while to get round to watching and reviewing.Unfortunately, do have to agree with the low rating and the poor reviews. 'Silent Retreat' is one of those films that never took off, starting off not very interestingly and never recovered and progressively got worse, particularly in the near-unwatchable later stages. Never judge a film without seeing the whole thing and wanted to not make 'Silent Retreat' an exception, so gave it a fair chance. The location is also suitably spooky. However, so much brings 'Silent Retreat' down. All the acting is either over-histrionic or disinterested, both in a few cases, and the direction is so phoned in and pedestrian, one gets the sense that the director showed no interest in the film at all. Too much of the soundtrack is intrusive and annoying, made worse by the excessive and obvious sound effects that just cheapens the mood. The film looks drab generally and like it was made in haste, the photography especially betrays that with its amateurishness.Where 'Silent Retreat' most underwhelms is the writing and story. The writing is incredibly lazy, it's awkward in dialogue, is gratuitously crude, confused because of not tying things up or going into full detail and doesn't feel complete. The story suffers from a very limp pace, apparent early on and gets slower and slower until an interminably dragged out and ridiculous second half. It further suffers from feeling too much like a short film stretched out with a lot of useless padding. The stereotypical characters are as unlikeable as they come, the inconsistent and illogical motivations bring them down further. For a film billed as a horror, there is very little interesting and nothing remotely scary which makes a waste of such a spooky-looking location. The scares and thrills are too few, barely any even, and are far too predictable, anaemic and weakly timed to make impact, with the dull pacing and obvious sound editing cheapening them significantly. 'Silent Retreat' doesn't engage let alone thrill, the more it progressed the duller, predictable and more nonsensical it became for a premise that was already ridiculous. The ending leaves very little impact, very contrived and not much of one at all.In summary, very poor on the whole. 1/10 Bethany Cox

linskminyuk . So I did watch this all the way through, as difficult at that was. Most of the previous 5 reviews hit the major points. Poor acting, nonsensical dialogue, annoying characters. Nice setting, and a few of wilderness shot were pleasant, but that's about it. I lost it, and almost turned the movie off when I realized, that as day passed and turned into evening, the group was sitting around enjoying a glass of wine and some scary stories - that the one female character who left for a morning walk, never returned? Really, after warning everyone not to venture outside because of bear sightings, the host, and most of the others just forgot about this girl (who also missed the entire day of meetings I presume), and better yet, thought they'd wait until morning to look for her. Ridiculous, and the remainder of the plot, the actions of the characters, make no sense. The British girl decides to put on headphones to listen to tapes, while people are missing, some presumed dead, and she's alone in the house. The headphones conveniently drown out the noise of altercations and murders one floor below - great writing. I could go on. I enjoy B horror, even C, this one as hard to watch. One more item, when they check on the caretaker's place, the one dude is sure the missing girl is behind the locked door. But the other dude says you need more than suspicion to force the door, so they leave. If you look at the scene, there is an un-draped window almost directly behind the tied up girl, had they stepped outside and peeked in, they would have found her.

utahman1971 Did we watch the same movie? This did not have any porn elements in it. Not even close. It had some short sex scene that showed nothing and a boob flash but that is it. Who ever thinks anything close to a porn for this movie is stupid.The whole movie was dumb as they come or one of the worst and to consider it even a horror is dumb. It had lame of hardly any gore and the action was not hardly any. It dragged for a whole 60 minutes and then still was bad.The ending was not much of an ending. People that like slow horror movies would love this and if you don't then why do you like them in the first place? Acting was seriously bad as heck. The accent girl was terrible.None of the actors worked well together. Director must of thought, "What the hell?" and just did it anyways. Just a quick buck. Wrong Turn series has more porn elements than this movie.

quincytheodore Usually, a horror cast would have one or two rowdy member, but in this "Silent Retreat" almost everyone is rude, offensive and abusive. A couple of characters who seems normal are either too bland or stuck in perpetual frantic expression to look normal as human. This is a shame because it might have some foundation for horror and the production isn't bad, but the constant bickering by obnoxious characters is all this retreat can offer.A collection of dubious people stay in a cabin for the weekend, and these might just be the most offensive cast. They communicate with profanity, sexual harassment and completely illogical banter. At no point the movie portrays a functional team, let alone actual coworkers. Everyone is the over-the-top version of the most annoying stereotype, which is undoubtedly terrible to watch.It's barely a horror as any shred of prospect is hidden under juvenile insults and terrible remarks wanting to be seductive talk. The photography involved and a few of the flashbacks are almost looking like they are going somewhere, but instead the characters would wander around aimlessly for nearly the entire movie. It relies on a shocking twist which is not sufficient to say the least.The only haunting here is the horrendous shouting between the shady characters, and it's actually a pretty horrific experience.