Haunters of the Silence (2025) [Movie Review]

I have shuddered from their coming, yet have run to meet them there,
And have cursed them and have blessed them and have loved them to despair.

—Madison Cawain, “Haunters of the Silence”

To call Tatu and Veleda Heikkinen’s Haunters of the Silence an experimental film almost does a disservice to the film because the tag alone can inadvertently pare off a fair chunk of the film’s potential audience. Sure, there is very little dialogue. Sure, it shares similarities with silent-era film, like intertitles and tinting. And sure, there are kaleidoscopic sequences and seemingly disjointed imagery, and much of the movie is somewhere between a dream and reality. But much like the similarly sparse and disjointed Skinamarink a few years ago, Haunters of the Silence does exceptionally well at building a throughline and, I think, most viewers will find the narrative in this film much easier to follow.

Haunters of the Silence is heartbreaking (not least because it opens with a man, K. [Tatu Heikkinen], mourning the loss of his wife) but because in his mourning, K. must go about his life alone, in silence, and we with him. With little more than static camera shots, the sounds of forest animals around their quiet home, and later, the narration of a Cosmos-like space documentary playing on the television, we get a remarkably complete idea of the kind of life K. and his wife have led. Bones and roots adorn the walls of their dimly lit home. A mjölnir necklace hangs around K.’s neck as he hand carves incense into a small cauldron burner and a breathy soundtrack begins to play. This is a couple that is in tune—with themselves, with the natural world, and, as we will soon see, the supernatural world, as well. 

The film’s cinematography (courtesy of Veleda Thorsson-Heikkinen) is simple but rich with meaning and detail. Every frame lends weight to our understanding of K. and his struggles throughout the night. K.’s sleep is restless, continually interrupted by strange dreams and the impending presence of The Hat Man (John Haughm)—a real-life creepypasta that appears to sufferers of sleep paralysis. 

As the night wears on and The Hat Man draws nearer, K. is pulled toward an ever-thinning boundary between nightmare and waking life. The camera techniques and sound design becomes more and more erratic as K. spirals, dragging the audience down with him in a hypnotizing show of style that’s difficult to look away from. One sequence in particular seems designed to do just that—hypnotize viewers into the same meditative, trance-like state that K. himself enters.

It’s the swinging pendulum between control and chaos that makes Haunters of the Silence so effective. While The Hat Man has his unnerving scenes—some downright terrifying—K.’s battle is ultimately with himself as he tries to make sense of this new path he’s been set on. What makes it so scary is realizing that, even if and when he makes it to the other side, we know that this is a night that K. will have to repeat for a long time to come. Pain and grief presses on, and it wouldn’t have any reservations with trampling K. into the dirt, if he lets it.

If I wanted to be overly critical, I could acknowledge that Tatu Heikkinen’s performance as K. is better the less he’s tasked with, as he tends to overact scenes that involve physical miming, like using the remote control or his phone, breaking the illusion. Luckily, those instances are kept to a minimum and viewers should have no problem being quickly swept up again in the atmosphere of the film. For a project made with this light a crew and a budget of just $2,000, I’d be willing to forgive much more than an exaggerated TV remote click.

Haunters of the Silence is an encapsulating film and deserves to be treated as such. Watch it on as large a screen as you can, with a high-quality sound system or headphones. Even if narrative-light films or tone poems aren’t your thing, this film is well worth 71 minutes of your time. You might be surprised.

Haunters of the Silence is available to stream now on RELAY, and you can watch the trailer below:

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Article by Ande Thomas

Ande loves the intersection of sci-fi and horror, where our understanding of the natural world clashes with our fear of the new and unknown. He is an independent member of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and a supporting member of the Horror Writers Association. He writes about monsters and foreign horror and can also be found over on Letterboxd.

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