Man, I never laughed so much this year, and it's quite hard to make me laugh. While I expected some Hostel-style movie, the smile came to my face even from the beginning. This film-inside-film start with a female stabbed "victim" messing the whole set until she finally "die". Her overacting drive the director nuts and his funny reaction tell us, the viewers, that Mute Witness is not a typically horror movie.The main character, the mute American make-up artist Billy Hughes, is played by the beautiful yet talented Russian actress Marina Zudina. Her performance is top-notch; her character can't speak, so the body language and the emotions on her face must compensate.And, oh boy, she did a wonderful job. Her sister (Fay Ripley) is the girlfriend or the fiancée or the wife of the "in-film director" (Evan Richards). They were both very funny most of the time. I won't spoil more, but the scenes following the bathtub moment, with them both, the fake policemen and later the angry neighbor were plain brilliant black comedy.The plot got twisted near the end, possibly misleading at one particular moment. But don't worry. Such a delicious movie can be viewed in family or with your boy-/girl-/friend.

This may be the most tension-filled movie I have ever seen.In fact, it's so nerve-wracking, I haven't been able to watch it again after viewing it two years ago, but I will since I have the DVD. There were a couple of scenes in here that are almost too much to watch....so if you've got problems and need to "escape" for an hour-and-half this film will get your mind off anything else. The Russian actress Marina Zudina did a super job in facial expressions alone, which she had to do since her character in here is a mute. She plays a cute and wholesome makeup artist for a sleazy filmmaker. After the day's shooting is done and "Billie" is about to leave, she hears something. She takes a peek into the room where they were filming and discovers they are now shooting a "snuff film" and actually killing someone. Billie's eavesdropping is discovered and she runs for her life as the killers go searching for her in this big warehouse-type building.There are two extended scenes in which our heroine is running for her life and both of them will wear you out. The first I described above. The second scene, the climactic one, goes on too long and isn't as well done as the first. In fact, the film should have been trimmed a bit but, overall, since it's so good at keeping our attention, then it served its purpose as entertainment.

At first this movie really had my full attention. I'm not saying this was an original movie, like I had never seen before, but it sure had something to offer that really appealed to me. It's a pity that it all went wrong in the second half of the movie.Billy Hughes is a mute make-up artist who works on an American slasher movie that's being shot in Moscow. One fine evening she witnesses the making of a snuff movie in the studio where her crew works. Now she has to try to escape from the murderers (Russian people who work in her film crew), to stay alive and to convince the authorities that the murder that she witnessed is real.I like to watch good thrillers and I'm a fan of European movies, because most of the time they pay more attention to the character development and the story. Even though this movie sometimes reminds me of a Hitchcock movie and even though it has a European cast and director, it can't convince me all that much. It has some good potential, but somehow they have messed it up and made it look like a mediocre Hollywood movie. The story is quite original, the locations are nice, but it is the acting that doesn't always do the trick. I'm not saying the actors are bad, but they aren't great either. I guess there are people who really love this movie, but I'm certainly not one of them. I give it a 5/10.

We all went to a Sony theater expecting to see another 1994 release, the theater did a test sneak and those who chose to stay saw Mute Witness, there was no press on it beforehand, the audience was the most scared and freaked out of any film I have viewed with an audience, more than The Exorcist or Halloween. Several people could not handle the material and left the theater, and after the picture opened, the theater soon pulled it, as it was over the top in suspense gore and subject matter, and reciepts may have been off as a result. If you pay attention, and stay with Billy on her struggle, allowing yourself to get caught up in it, this film is one HELL of a nail biter. On video, it isn't the same, you really need an audience, preferably one that hasn't seen it before, to get the full blood-curdling impact. Waller does a very good job and makes it look easy. It is a genre piece and moves the audience into safer territory near the end, I believe, to keep the form consistent with its stylistic opening. The film has its place in history with the most intense material ever put on screen.