THE SILENCE, a Painfully Bad Remake of A QUIET PLACE

A family desperately tries to find a safe haven after creatures, hypersensitive to sound, begin wreaking havoc. Sound familiar? Released by Netflix in April 2019, The Silence is a painful attempt to remake the wildly successful A Quiet Place, which came out the year prior. Though this is based on a 2015 novel of the same name, the story has already been done perfectly, leaving little to be desired in this straight-to-streaming flick.

While cave diving, a group of researchers accidentally awaken prehistoric-like creatures with an extreme sensitivity to sound. Outside of the caves, we are introduced to Ally (Kiernan Shipka), a deaf teen who struggles to deal with her overbearing parents, played by Stanley Tucci and Miranda Otto. She hopes to escape their severe helicopter parenting when she heads off to college.

However, her future plans are shaken when the creatures make way across the country, forcing the government to put forth a shelter-in-place order. Ally’s family, along with family friend Glenn (John Corbett), favor heading out to the country, hoping it will be quieter and therefore safer. But they will soon learn that a safe place may not exist away from the monsters — and people.

This film had the sad misfortune of following up a critical darling that has an eerily similar setup. Even down to having a deaf family member, The Silence doesn’t have much to set itself apart. Even if the aforementioned film (which ironically stars Tucci’s sister-in-law Emily Blunt) didn’t exist, this film still doesn’t offer much to the audience.

I’ll start off with some positives. There are some clever uses for survival thrown in. For every three moments of cringe, you get one “that’s sort of cool” moment to keep you somewhat interested. Truthfully, that’s all I could give to this film in terms of credit. Mainly, this film suffers from a weak story, painfully dull dialogue, and lackluster special effects. Simply put, it’s a bad TV movie.

The most puzzling part of it all, is at a point we’re introduced to a weirdly religious cult-like group. For some reason, they’ve taken a morbid liking to Ally and her family and prove they are just as dangerous as the monsters surrounding them. Though, I’m baffled as to how a crazed, and well-organized, group came to be mere days into the event. It is such a bizarre, unnecessary part of the story that only adds to the hokey-ness of it all.

The Silence has some talented actors in it, which sadly said “yes” to the most simplistic script. I also find that hiring a hearing actress to play a deaf character, especially one that speaks quite often and signs very little, a bit offensive to the Deaf community. I’m sure Netflix has a thing with Shipka, based on her role in their Sabrina series, but that certainly does not mean we can’t get a little more sincere representation in our films.

There is so much bad in this film that I wouldn’t even recommend as a passive watch. If you haven’t watched A Quiet Place yet, I recommend giving your time to that. Also, if you’re looking for an apocalyptic monster flick, that I feel this film took some cues from, I’d suggest The Mist (the 2007 film, not the series).