The Silence (2019)

Movie Info

Now, the creature performs his rendition of “Tradition”!

Cave explorers have unleashed a horror on the world. A hidden cave pocket releases a creature called Vesps, and the creatures are attracted to sound. Hugh (Stanley Tucci), his wife Kelly (Miranda Otto), her mother Lynn (Kate Trotter), his daughter Ally (Kiernan Shipka), his son Jude (Kyle Harrison Breitkopf), and their friend Glenn (John Corbett) decide to try to leave the city for safety but find reaching a safe location might be impossible. The Vesps might be the immediate danger, but there are other dangers lurking in the world.

Directed by John R. Leonetti, The Silence is an apocalyptic horror monster movie. Adapting the 2015 novel by Tim Lebbon, the film was released on Netflix on April 10, 2019.

With A Quiet Place, a “new” idea of horror was explored for thrills. Movies like Wait Until Dark have played with the idea of people with handicaps facing off against people who might abuse their disability, but with A Quiet Place and Bird Box, the genre was reinvented for the screen. While the story for The Silence predates A Quiet Place, the telling feels very generic and lacks the tension of A Quiet Place.

Wait…are we rooting for the rattlesnake or the creature?

The problem with the movie isn’t the similarities to other films as much as the pacing and hodgepodge of ideas. The movie essentially is a mash-up of all kinds of horror clichés. You have underground cave dwellers (like The Descent) that swarming (like Pitch Black) attracted to sound (like A Quiet Place), trapping people in a house (like Bird Box), and then faced with dealing with a creepy cult (like every movie about post-apocalypse). It feels smashed together with little rhyme, reason, or flow. It isn’t very compelling (or scary for that matter).

The movie seems to lack a solid direction. It feels like the movie should be about Keira Shipka’s deaf teenager, but Stanley Tucci seems to be more of the leader of the film. Regarding Shipka, the deaf issue doesn’t really seem to play into the plot much, and it feels like it is only when it is needed to propel the story forward without being very consistent. John Corbett’s character is the sacrificial character, and Billy MacLellan is creepy as the minister but also feels shoehorned into the plot too late and too underdeveloped.

Add a crazy reverend guy?  Sure, why not at this point

The creatures aren’t bad looking. Like Pitch Black, the attacks are swarm attacks so most of the individual creatures aren’t scene except in quick attacks. Longer shots of the creatures (like on the road) show they resemble fleshy dinosaurs, but the use of the silence isn’t as strong as in A Quiet Place where the tensions just rise…here the characters will talk, whisper, and have a fight without attracting the creatures so it doesn’t feel as dangerous.

The Silence is rather bland. It tries to find the scares from too many sources, and as a result, it feels half-baked in many areas. The movie kind of sets up a Silence world with man-vs-Vesps for the future of the planet, but I don’t really have much interest in revisiting the characters or the story. With so many other better horror options in similar veins, leave The Silence behind.