Incompetence is the order of the day in the horror movie “Silent House.” The premise is simple: a woman (played by Elizabeth Olsen), her father (Adam Trese), and her uncle (Eric Sheffer Stevens) are trapped in their lakeside retreat, and bad things happen inside the house. If “Silent House” had taken a traditional approach to its genre, it would have been a decent, if forgettable, horror film. The problem, and charm, lies in its usage of trends found in modern films.

“Silent House” is aware of tropes used in the horror genre, but it doesn’t seem to understand why they’re used. To put it bluntly, the camera work here is the worst aspect of the movie. The camera work in this movie is a prime example of why filmmakers should be smarter with their usage of the “shaky camera,” especially when they can’t justify its use by having the project be a found-footage movie.

As stated earlier, “Silent House” is aware of horror conventions even if it doesn’t understand them. It is aware that a monster that gets little screen time is scarier to audiences because their imaginations are filling in the blank, as “Paranormal Activity” has demonstrated.

It doesn’t seem to understand, however, that the audience has to be given something to latch onto. The story suddenly has Olsen’s character start to panic after a few mildly creepy things occur in the house, as the more frenetic shaking of the camera tells the audience that they should be scared.

Perhaps the saddest part about the film’s execution is the fact that there is a legitimately unsettling horror story here, as the film reveals at the end. The problem with the revelation at the end is that the film throws all of the answers at the audience at once. If the audience was spoon-fed these answers, while still being kept largely in the dark, this would have been a fairly solid psychological horror. With that said, “Silent House” would probably be better received if it were billed as a dark comedy instead.

Here’s an example of the movie’s unintentional comedy: When things start to go to Hell in a hand basket, the music builds to a crescendo to tell the audience that this is when they should get scared. The heroine is on the floor in a fetal position from the stress as the camera makes a concerted effort to keep her chest in the frame, slightly tainting Olsen’s otherwise excellent performance. She turns her head to the right to see if the coast is clear, revealing the monster in full view for the first time, except the camera shakes violently before the monster can be seen, and the scene cuts to a shot of Olsen running in terror.

Despite the harsh comments, this film comes highly recommended as one of the funniest films I have seen in a while. All of the missteps that the movie made have allowed it to transcend its poor quality and allowed it to become a legitimately entertaining experience.