The Unheard offers well-crafted, evocative, slow burn horror that rewards the patient viewer, but is not without its issues.  Joining a number of horror films featuring deaf characters (Hush, A Quiet Place, The Orphan, Avenged, etc.), The Unheard is unique in that its protagonist, Chloe (ably played by non-binary performer Lachlan Watson, best known to genre fans as Theo on The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) undergoes a gene therapy treatment to repair her hearing, and spends much of the film as a hearing person.  She lost her hearing due to meningitis at age eight, and for some reason never learned to sign, relying instead on a transcription app on her phone.

Now a young adult under the care of Dr. Lynch (Shunori Ramanathan – wonderful in the role), Chloe slowly regains her hearing. What makes the film effective horror is that Chloe goes to her family’s vacation home on Cape Cod during the off season to recover from the procedure and prepare the house to be sold.  We learn Chloe’s mother (Michele Hicks) disappeared years ago and no one quite knows what happened to her.  Her vanishing is the other single defining event in Chloe’s life.  As Chloe begins to recover her hearing she begins to hear things that may or may not be real (a side effect Dr. Lynch warned her about), or that may be a kind of haunting – the spirit of her missing mother speaking to her.

The film does a great number of things well.  It gets the Cape in winter right – the near-deserted feeling of the neighborhoods in which rentals predominate, as well as the cold and isolation.  The film is positively Lovecraftian in terms of presenting rural New England and the weird and eerie occurrences.  When Chloe runs into a former childhood playmate and his mother (Brendan Meyer and Boyana Balta), the everyday nature of the conversation and the reminiscences of childhood take on a disturbing and uncanny aspect. The local handyman, Hank (Nick Sandow), whom Chloe’s dad hires to fix the water heater, furnace, and other things around the house is alternately friendly and creepy.  The performances elevate the film, especially Watson, who underplays Chloe nicely and allows their own charisma to carry the character – the audience is meant to care for this character and we do.

Part of the challenge of The Unheard is that the mystery is no mystery. What happened to the mother and what will happen to Chloe is rather apparent within the first twenty-five minutes of the film.  Knowing what was coming did not, however, make the film less enjoyable. The atmosphere of dread, the use of location, and the slow descent of Chloe into uncertainty as her hearing returns, along with a sense of being haunted are all very effective and make for an effective film.  The lack of mystery, however, can make The Unheard feel a bit overlong.  Still, worth the watch.