When I was very young I used to experience nightmares where I felt as though I had “woken up” in my bed, but was still at the mercy of whatever dreamt-up horrors might lurk beyond the wall of sleep. Given how young I was at the time, as well as the transitory nature of dreams and nightmares, my recollections of this are sparse, but the feeling these episodes left still remains – not least the vague memory of hoping and praying that I’ll wake up “properly” from my next dream. I occasionally remember this and wonder if what I experienced as a child is an example of the phenomenon known as sleep paralysis.
For as long as humans have dreamt, they’ve also experienced the unsettling (yet totally natural and explainable), phenomenon called sleep paralysis, which results in the sufferer finding themselves trapped in a half-asleep state and unable to move. In this state, many experience vivid and frightening hallucinations, sometimes of spectres and demons, which take advantage of their vulnerability. Although only given the modern moniker of sleep paralysis in 1928, the impact of the condition upon media – especially horror and fantasy genres, is undeniable. People in the modern day who haven’t experienced it first-hand will likely have learned about from a documentary like Rodney Ascher’s The Nightmare (2015), or something similar that was the result of its subsequent cultural osmosis. Various horror directors have attempted to explore the subject in film (to greater or lesser success), and now Finnish husband-and-wife team Veleda Thorsson-Heikkinen and Tatu Heikkinen invite viewers to be paralysed with fear and wonder with their debut feature, Haunters of the Silence (2025) – which is available now through Tubi.
A 72-minute experimental, expressionistic indie horror film with little-to-no dialogue, Haunters of the Silence begins with K (Tatu Heikkinen), a man with an interest in folklore and the occult who is spreading the ashes of his dearly departed wife (Veleda Thorsson-Heikkinen), at a lake, after which he returns home hoping to sleep and get some respite from the grief and stress that plague his every waking hour. Unfortunately, once he drifts off to sleep he finds himself trapped in a surreal and unsettling nightmare realm, pursued by a shadowy entity known as the “Hat Man” (John Haughm), a sinister apparition commonly seen by those who suffer from sleep paralysis. From thereon out, the plot is loose and the vibes are high as viewers are treated/subjected to a hypnotic array of uncanny sights and sounds designed to lull them into an oneiric, hypnagogic trance.
Visually striking and wholly singular, Haunters of the Silence is a horror picture that defies traditional classification.
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Visually striking and wholly singular, Haunters of the Silence is a horror picture that defies traditional classification. It’s a slow, sometimes repetitive picture in spite of its length, and functions more in the realm of the poetic than traditional genre filmmaking, perhaps even more than most formally experimental works of horror cinema. Tatu and Veleda’s picture is an acquired taste, and although its closest relative may be the controversial Skinamarink (2022), I personally found it to be a more effective, interesting, and discomforting work than Kyle Edward-Ball’s cult hit. It’s not just because of the strength of the images that the directors managed to conjure up, but also in large part due to how unapologetically raw and lo-fi it is. Haunters of the Silence was clearly made on a low budget, and that makes it all the more impressive and relatable as it taps into an atmosphere of primal, personal, abstract terror that just would not be present in a picture with more gloss or sheen. It also achieves a rare goal that many of its genre peers aim for (with varying degrees of success), as it seems like it operates on the wavelength of an actual nightmare, and because of that it manages to be genuinely startling in ways I didn’t expect.
Haunters of the Silence is slow-burn in a lot of its approach, but there’s a lot more going on than one might first expect. Tatu and Veleda’s film is many things at once: an exploration of grief; a psychologically-charged delve into the machinations of a troubled mind; a haunted house tale; a supernatural take on the home invasion thriller; and an act of ritual magick committed to digital video. There are elements of folk horror and the occult alongside suggestions of cosmic and existential terror, and the dreamscapes conjured throughout feel very much in keeping with the current wave of liminal horror that’s sweeping across the internet – especially the occasional images or moments that reminded me of web-horror masterpiece Marble Hornets, which is an achievement in and of itself. Even the film’s antagonist, the Hat Man, is a combination of old and new horror elements from folklore and internet popular culture – a demonic force plucked straight from the realms of “creepypasta” and analog horror that’s also a classic master mesmerist in the vein of Svengali (a comparison which is made within the actual film), Caligari, and Mabuse.
The style of the film is as experimental as its narrative, featuring elements of poetry, music, animation, and even some delightful Švankmajer-esque stop-motion. There’s more texture to the piece than some of its similarly-paced genre brethren, and it’s all the more successful for it because if regular cinema is a dream and horror cinema is a nightmare, then Haunters of the Silence is the very thing that it portrays – the uneasy moment between dreaming and waking where the shadows come out to play, and all you can do is watch.
HAUNTERS OF THE SILENCE IS AVAILABLE TO WATCH DIGITALLY AND DVD
