The Silence Horror House Review

 

So, what we have here is a film which is basically about little monsters that can basically be described as prehistoric cave gremlin bat hybrids. On their own one of these creatures would be a serious pain but the real problem is that they don’t arrive on their own they tend to arrive in swarms, it’s like what if we remade Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds with what H R Giger drew while smoking weed and looking at bats.

We follow the Andrews family which consists of Hugh Andrews, his wife, his son, his mother-in-law and most importantly for the story his daughter Ally who suffers from acute deafness, and communicates in sign language, now not to give too much away but this is something which you would think would be a weakness but actually turns out to give the family a useful tool.

The Silence very much feels like a hodgepodge of ideas from other films, it feels like there is a sprinkle of The Mist here and a pinch of Cloverfield there. I think with the deaf daughter it feels like it has this one idea that it really wants to lean heavily into and to hang its hat off, it feels a little bit like a one trick pony at times. What the film did well for me at least is to establish its characters well giving them enough time to develop effectively which in turn helps you to care about them and their fate, I think the film does a pretty good job of making them feel like a real family with multi layered relationships within it, you not only know who these people are but what they all mean to each other and I would put a lot of this down to very good acting.

I especially have to give props to Stanley Tucci who provides a strong lead, I think the film did a good job of setting up its post-apocalyptic world but later on the film seemed to lose its step a little, I don’t want to talk about the plot piece by piece but there’s a point for me where the story just swerves off, add to this that for me the film ends rather abruptly. Part of me feels that this would have worked better as a short mini series with a few ideas expanded upon and a more definitive ending. I think the film sets up the potential for a lot of ingesting ideas but doesn’t see enough of them through but I suppose at least it doesn’t outstay its welcome the very fact I wish there was a little more is a lot better than getting to a point where I keep looking at my watch praying for it to end.

For me this was an enjoyable but equally forgettable film, it happily filled an hour and a half of my time and I liked it but I also don’t feel like I will feel any urge to return to it in the future but that’s ok, not every film needs to be a stone-cold classic, I would give it a 6 out of 10.