The Silence is a 2019 film directed by John R. Leonetti and starring Stanley Tucci as the father of a family caught up in a world were horrifying creatures have all but brought the human race to extinction.
Also starting Kiernan Shipka as Tucci’s daughter Ally, she is a deaf teenager whose knowing a life of silence comes in useful as the monsters are blind and can only hear where their prey is.
If this plot sounds familiar to the movie A Quiet Place, that’s because it’s exactly like the movie A Quiet Place. Apparently the two films were in production at the same time, so this may not just be a rip off and cash in of A Quiet Place. I’m sure there are several films that can all fall into this similar box. For me the baddies that have no sight but excellent hearing reminded me most of the lickers monsters from the Resident Evil video games.
Unfortunately the monsters in the Silence whilst shown to be a significant threat just don’t seem that iconic or threatening. They look like small pterodactyls. Their size isn’t a threat, just that they come in huge numbers.
The film is decent in its pacing and ability to raise tension, but you can see a lot of what happens coming a mile away. As soon as you see that the family have a competent fighter uncle you know he’s going to be the first to fall just to leave the others more vulnerable. There isn’t much character development of the son, grandmother or even the mother played by Miranda Otto here, and the film is mostly about the father and daughter.
The focus on Ally and Andrew (Tucci) is partly down to the mostly silent nature of the cast not wanting to speak means we can’t get too much focus on everyone. This does all feel like The Walking Dead or The Last of Us of people trying to survive in the surroundings of a monster filled world.
Naturally like those shows and like all films like this such as Bird Box the characters also have to deal with a group of sinister humans. In this case a small group lead by a sinister minister who wants Ally as she’s fertile. Ooh this would be much scarier in this post apocalyptic world of the world was more post apocalyptic. Literally Ally is still shown using wifi and communicating with her would be boyfriend and yet for some reason the cult vicar is recruiting every breeding age woman for his cult of about seven.
The film ends quite abruptly after they take on this cult, and shows that they’re learning how to take on the pterodactyls with bows and arrows. This shows how these things could be beaten fairly easily, as does another scene where it shows the monsters drawn to the sound of a wood chipper and all flying into it like lemmings.
When you think about it, and maybe that isn’t the point here, but the creatures shouldn’t have been able to take over the world as much as they did due to their small size, disadvantage of blindness and that they can be easily distracted with sound. Humans would quickly create traps with speakers to draw them in and just set them on fire.
Despite these critiques it’s still a fun enough film to watch for 90 minutes if you want to scratch that Bird Box/Quiet Place creature feature itch.
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