The Silence (2019 film)

The Silence is a 2019 English-language German horror film released on Netflix and starring Kiernan Shipka and Stanley Tucci. It is directed by John R. Leonetti based on a screenplay by Carey Van Dyke and Shane Van Dyke that adapts the 2015 horror novel of the same name by Tim Lebbon. The film depicts a world under attack by creatures who hunt by sound. Shipka plays a late-deafened teenager who seeks shelter with her family, and a cult seeks to take advantage of her deafness.

Netflix released The Silence on April 10, 2019. It was also released in theaters in seven markets in the rest of 2019, grossing $2.3 million.

Plot 

A cave research team unearths an unknown species of blind pterosaur-like creature, referred to as "vesps," from a mine. The vesps violently kill the researchers, fly out of the mine, and seek the noisiest areas.

Ally, a teenage girl who lost her hearing and both paternal grandparents in a car accident, lives with her parents Hugh and Kelly Andrews; her maternal grandmother Lynn, who has terminal lung cancer; her brother Jude; and their dog Otis. As the news of the vesp outbreak spreads, the US government declares a state of emergency and urges people to stay indoors and be quiet. Ally suggests they head to the countryside, which is likely to be quieter. Glenn, Hugh's best friend, joins them and brings his guns. They set out in two cars. While stopping to refuel, Ally walks Otis. A stranger appears and threatens to shoot Otis if they don't stop him from barking. Glenn shoots the man in the leg, and they drive away.

The group hits a massive traffic jam, blocking all the interstates, and Glenn goes off-road. Speeding through the countryside, Glenn's car hits a herd of fleeing deer and tumbles down the embankment. He survives but is trapped in the car. Hugh and Kelly fail to free him, and Glenn asks Hugh to leave with his family. As the Andrews family return to their car, Otis barks, attracting the vesps, who attack the car. Glenn fires his gun, leading them away from the Andrews' car, sacrificing himself. To keep his family safe, Hugh is forced to let the family dog out of the car because he continued barking and attracting the vesps. Ally holds her dad and cries while the rest of the family console each other.

Hugh goes outside of the car after the vesps seemed to have left, presumably to grab a tire iron in the road. Unfortunately, Lynn begins to have an asthma attack and starts coughing. While Jude struggles to get her inhaler, Hugh quietly grabs the tire iron and chucks it down the road to attract the Vesp. The vesp attacks it, and Hugh quietly gets back into the car. After he returns, he tells the family that the creatures can not see, only hear. So they can not talk, whisper, or text. Ally says that they all know how to live in silence. After agreeing, Hugh says that they need to find shelter before it gets dark.

Hugh leads his family on foot after setting Glenn's car on fire as a decoy. Lynn struggles to keep up, but her illness makes her weak. They decide to stop at the top of the hill, as they all need some rest. Jude spots a house in the countryside. The family heads towards it and finds a high fence with a locked gate. Their arrival shakes some bells and alerts the homeowner, who, unaware of the situation, comes out to defend her land. In doing so, she speaks and attracts the Vesps. They attack and kill her. The family uses a storm drain to enter the house. A rattlesnake in the drain scares Jude, and he struggles to keep quiet; unfortunately, the sounds of the snake begins to attract unwanted attention, ultimately resulting in vesps biting into Kelly's leg. Hugh distracts them by turning on a woodchipper, crushing the vesps flying into it, and the family enters the house.

While the others rest, Ally contacts her boyfriend, Rob, who tells her that his parents are dead. She also learns that religious cults have sprung up in the wake of the disaster. By morning, Kelly's wound is infected, so Hugh and Ally leave to find antibiotics. While at the store, Ally discovers vesp eggs are growing inside corpses. Returning home, the tongueless Reverend of a cult called "the Hushed" fails to recruit them. The Reverend snarls as Hugh and Ally walk away. They return with the antibiotics, and Kelly recovers. Ally learns from the Internet that vesps can not survive in the cold.

The Reverend finds the family's hide-out and shows up with a group of his followers, asking for Hugh's family to join them. Hugh politely asks them to leave, at which point the Reverend reveals his interest in Ally's fertility. Hugh brings out his gun, forcing the cultists to leave. Rob briefly contacts Ally, letting her know he is headed north to "the Refuge."

Hugh and Kelly wake up in the night and find a little girl at the door. After letting her in, they find she is a member of the Hushed. Phones strapped to her and placed around the house go off, attracting vesps. The Hushed abduct Ally, but Lynn runs outside to help her. Lynn holds Ally's captors down and screams; vesps attack and kill her and the captors while Ally escapes. Other Hushed members take Ally at knifepoint. Hugh, Kelly, and Jude fight back, and the struggle is not heard by the vesps due to a thunderstorm. They manage to kill most of the Hushed (they spare the girl and her apparent caretaker, who then go their separate ways), although Hugh is wounded.

Several weeks later, the remaining Andrews family trek across America and eventually arrive at the Refuge. Ally finds Rob, and together they hunt the vesps with arrows. Ally wonders whether the vesps will adapt to the cold, or humans will adapt to a soundless lifestyle, as she did.

Cast

 Stanley Tucci as Hugh Andrews
 Kiernan Shipka as Ally Andrews
 Miranda Otto as Kelly Andrews
 Kate Trotter as Lynn
 John Corbett as Glenn
 Kyle Harrison Breitkopf as Jude Andrews
 Dempsey Bryk as Rob
 Billy MacLellan as The Reverend

Production
The Silence is based on the 2015 horror novel of the same name by Tim Lebbon. The film is directed by John R. Leonetti based on an adapted screenplay by Carey Van Dyke and Shane Van Dyke. Actors Kiernan Shipka and Stanley Tucci were cast in the film in May 2017. In the following August, additional cast members were hired.

Principal photography began in Toronto in September 2017.

According to the film's production notes, the creatures are named "Vesps" after the Spanish avispa, meaning wasps. Director John R. Leonetti said that research was done into other cave creatures in order to design the Vesps. "Their skin is translucent, they have wings and they fly, but they also crawl and lay eggs like reptiles ... A lot of scientific research went into the design, the creation, and the computer animation of the creatures, right down to the detail of every joint, every vessel, and every move they make."

Release

Netflix released The Silence on April 10, 2019. Global Road Entertainment originally acquired in December 2017 the U.S. distribution rights to the film. The distributor had financial troubles, and in a failed attempt to avoid bankruptcy, Global Road sold distribution rights to various films, including The Silence, to Netflix.

The film was also released in seven markets around the world: Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Bolivia, Singapore, South Korea, and China, grossing over $2.3 million.

Critical reception
Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 31% based on 32 reviews, with an average rating of 4.23/10. The site's critics' consensus reads: "The Silence has nothing new to say with a derivative premise and placid pacing -- even a wasted Stanley Tucci is unable to elevate the stodgy material a decibel above dreadful." Metacritic assigned the film a score of 25 out of 100 from 4 critics, reflecting "generally unfavorable reviews".

Scott Tobias, reviewing for The New York Times, called The Silence "niche-targeted dreck" where "only a quality cast and more generous production values can cover up the shoddy stitching". Tobias said despite the film's depiction of "a grand evolutionary struggle... every moment feels like regression". RogerEbert.coms Brian Tallerico said that The Silence was "a dull retread of ideas explored more interestingly in other films and TV shows", and went on to say, "'The Silence' is barely a horror movie, and that's its biggest problem. A horror movie needs stakes, and you just never feel them here."

Social commentary

Deaf portrayal
Hearing actress Kiernan Shipka plays the lead character, a deaf teenager who battles monsters. Shipka learned some parts of American Sign Language for the role, and director John R. Leonetti said in an interview, "She learned to sign for the film, and now she's flawless, like she's been signing her entire life. She seems to have an almost innate sense of what it's like being a deaf person." Deaf celebrities Nyle DiMarco and Marlee Matlin and other members of the deaf community criticized Leonetti for saying that Shipka learning to sign was synonymous with knowing the culturally deaf experience and for undermining deaf representation by casting a hearing actor. DiMarco also criticized Shipka's ASL grammar, and others pointed out plot holes related to her character being deaf.

Comparison to A Quiet Place

The Silence was compared to A Quiet Place, a 2018 horror film with a similar premise. The novel The Silence was published in 2015, and filming of the adaptation took place in 2017, at the same time as A Quiet Place. While The Silence was acquired by a distributor, it was not released in theaters and was later picked up by Netflix. Quartzs Adam Epstein said while the parallel productions were coincidental, he compared The Silence to mockbusters (low-budget films that exploit blockbusters), highlighting that one of its screenwriters, Shane Van Dyke, wrote several scripts for The Asylum, a studio that specializes in mockbusters. The novel's author Tim Lebbon admitted that the two films' similarities are "a little troubling" and defended the film adaptation of his novel, "There are similarities, of course, but I'm confident that the movie of The Silence will stand on its own."

The Guardians Charles Bramesco called The Silence "a shoddy remix" of A Quiet Place and said, "The Silence exists for the sole purpose of being digitally sorted into a list of recommendations For Viewers Who Liked Bird Box, though that classification would be more accurately clocked as For Viewers Who Liked A Quiet Place... the demographic they're really after would be something closer to Viewers Who Have Trouble Telling Similar Things Apart." Deciders Anna Menta compared the films, "The Silence is much darker and gorier than A Quiet Place," and found The Silence to look low-budget in production values. Menta said The Silence was started before the invasion while A Quiet Place was set fully after the invasion. She noted the criticism of The Silence for having a hearing actor as a deaf character and highlighted its additional elements, a teen romance and a religious cult.

Writing for Comic Book Resources, Renaldo Matadeen contrasted The Silence from A Quiet Place, writing, "There are quite a few plot threads which make it clear the Netflix movie is far from a rip-off and is, in fact, it's [sic] own thing." Matadeen said The Silences deaf teenage girl can read lips and speak, "After a while, you almost forget Ally is deaf, resulting in the film lacking some of the genuine tension of A Quiet Place. He found the creatures "totally different" as well as the times compared to the creature invasion. While both films have "a somewhat similar format" in families trying to survive the creatures, "In The Silence, we get interference from external segments of mankind via the Hushed."

See also
List of films featuring the deaf and hard of hearing

References

External links
 
 

Category:2019 films
Category:2019 horror films
Category:2010s monster movies
Category:American monster movies
Category:German horror films
Category:American films
Category:German films
Category:Films about cults
Category:Films based on British novels
Category:Films directed by John R. Leonetti
Category:Films set in New Jersey
Category:Films set in Pennsylvania
Category:Films shot in Toronto
Category:Netflix original films