Silent Scream

Scotty Parker arrives in Southern California and is directed to a cliffside boarding house run by Mrs. Engels. She meets the other tenants—Doris, Peter, Jack, and Mason—and the uneasy, standoffish atmosphere of the Victorian mansion becomes clear. The search ends with Scotty securing a room and contemplating life at the new address.

The four students form a tentative friendship and agree to go on a double date together. They share a sense of camaraderie despite the house’s moody owner. The evening promises a social warmth contrasted with the mansion’s looming isolation.

Doris and Peter stroll the beach near the house after the date. Peter, drunk, makes unwanted advances, and Doris leaves him on the sand. He is later stabbed to death by an unseen assailant who uses a butcher knife.

Lieutenant McGiver and Sergeant Rusin are assigned to the murder and begin to suspect Mrs. Engels and her son. Their inquiries probe the strange dynamics in the Engels household. The case tightens the mansion’s already tense atmosphere.

In the basement laundry, Doris tells Scotty she plans to move after the Peter incident. The mood shifts from date night warmth to uncertainty and fear. The basement becomes a quiet space where motives and futures are reconsidered.

Back in Scotty’s room, she and Jack become intimate. The moment marks a rare personal closeness in a tense setting. It foreshadows how the house’s secrets will collide with the students’ lives.

In the basement, a hidden door bursts open and Victoria stabs Doris repeatedly in the head and chest. Doris’s death is brutal and immediate, revealing Victoria’s violent nature. The murderer escapes through the hidden door into the house’s air-duct system.

Scotty follows a trail of blood to the hidden door and discovers a staircase running through the house’s air ducts to a room off the main attic. She climbs to the attic corridor with a door at the end, where danger lurks. The claustrophobic chase elevates the film’s mood.

Scotty attempts to reach the attic room but is attacked by Victoria, who pulls her inside. Mrs. Engels bursts in to intervene, bringing a sudden shift from pursuit to confrontation. The manor’s secrets begin to spill out in this tense moment.

Mrs. Engels reveals Victoria is her daughter, clarifying the girl’s familiar pattern of violence. Mason challenges his mother for taking in boarders, which culminates in a surprising truth about Victoria’s relationship to Mason. The mansion’s cursed lineage begins to surface.

Mason retrieves a gun from his room and returns to the attic. He shoots Mrs. Engels, killing her, as Victoria closes in. The confrontation becomes a deadly family drama that pits two generations of pain against each other.

Victoria survives the initial gunfire and continues the attack as Scotty struggles to break free. Mason shoots Victoria, then kills himself in a final act of desperation. The police arrive as Scotty frees herself, and Victoria dies from a knife wound found on the attic floor, leaving Jack to console Scotty.