THE SILENCE: A Missed Opportunity For All Involved

Reviewing Netflix’s The Silence has one major problem. It’s impossible to watch the film without thinking about John Krasinki’s A Quiet Place, last year’s sleeper hit. Review The Silence and don’t mention A Quiet Place, it becomes a cinematic elephant in the room. Review The Silence and talk about A Quiet Place and you’re kind of doing a disservice to The Silence, you’re not really playing fair.

The Silence is based on Tim Lebbon’s 2015 novel The Silence, which has roots that go further than A Quiet Place. It would be unfair to accuse The Silence of copying that film, it simply puts it in an unfair position. I really want to say The Silence is a decent film that could stand its own against Krasinki’s film, but it’s just not a very good film and it makes me very upset.

Peak Tucci With A Hint Of Sabrina

The story follows 16-year-old Ally (Kiernan Shipka, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) who has lost her hearing in an accident some years ago. She is constantly teased at school, but her family seems like a sweet little unit of their own. When terrifying flying beasts called vesps attack the town, the family flees and learn that the vesps hunt by sound, seeking out noisy areas. The family must make no sound while trying to find a safe place. Guess how well that goes.

Oh, and there isa tongueless cult too. Enticed to watch yet?

The award for most frustrating film of the year goes to The Silence. I doubt there will be as infuriating a film as this the rest of the year. There’s much potential here, like there is so often with these adaptations, but the film is riddled with pacing issues and director John R. Leonetti has chosen to focus on the wrong bloody things.

There’s a good film in there somewhere, but you’ll have to dig deep to find it. Its 90-minute runtime and a lot of Stanley Tucci make it watchable, but only once and then never again. Even the usually fun and interesting Shipka is flat and boring here, not given much to do. Her character has absolutely zero personality, apart from her being deaf. Miranda Otto, so deliciously evil and camp in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina alongside Shipka, has turned on autoplay and doesn’t even seem to be trying.

Tucci survives the film by being peak Tucci. Every character, especially every dad he plays, he plays as the best of his kind. Familiar and approachable, Tucci never fails to bring some warmth into any film. No film has needed it quite as badly as The Silence though. It’s a particularly cold film, from the colour palette to the performances, but it’s a joy to see Tucci kick some serious butt here. His character Hugh killing a bunch of vesps with a woodchipper is an inspired choice and I applaud it.

It takes a lot of talent to ruin as many films as John R. Leonetti has. A gifted cinematographer and a frequent collaborator of James Wan’s, he doesn’t seem to have picked up anything from the modern master of horror. From the boring Annabelle to the absolutely atrocious Wolves At The Door, Leonetti struggles with his scripts, unable to bring any momentum or intensity on screen. The Silence might be his best film, but that’s really not a compliment.

Another Day, Another Cult

Leonetti is not a stranger to films about cults. Both Annabelle and Wolves At The Door include cults and so does The Silence. And I would argue the cult is in fact one of the strong points of the film. Or it would have been, if they were introduced much earlier. The Hushed, as they call themselves, are the true stuff of nightmares, showing the worst of humanity in a situation like this. Eager to recruit Ally, who due to her deafness and age is a prime candidate for some babymaking under the circumstances, The Hushed are a patriarchy at its worst. With their cut off tongues and silence, disrupted by the occasional inhuman snarling, they’re unnerving and much more terrifying than the vesps.

If the film had really put its focus on what happens to humanity in situations like these, The Silence would have been a much better film. Humans are hugely adaptable, we can survive silence and the vesps, but can we survive our own kind? That should be the question in the heart of The Silence, and maybe it is, but just isn’t communicated properly. Ally follows the news from her tablet, which has the longest battery life known to man, I need to get me one of those! She sees people sacrificed, tortured and dying and it’s all because of man, not creature.

The Silence; Should We Shut Up or Shout It From The Rooftops?

Despite all the things I have just written against the film, there is a certain guilty pleasure element to the film. It’s awful, it’s bad, but it’s also the kind of film that you’ll end up telling your friends about – just how bad it is, but how awesome Stanley Tucci is. The Silence will make a fun double feature with Bird Box, also a thriller playing with the senses. Both have a trashy quality to them, they might even compliment each other. The Silence is low budget and it looks the part, never really aspiring to be highbrow, but one wished it would have aspired to be a good film.

The Silence is worth a watch because of Tucci and Tucci alone, but if you crave a good film, just pick up a copy of A Quiet Place instead.

Did you catch The Silence? What did you think? Let us know in the comments!

The Silence is now streaming on Netflix.