Netflix has done it again!
Sadly, the it in question is making an inferior knock off of A Quiet Place.
Tonally and narratively, The Silence is a lot more akin to the streaming giant's previous knock off, Birdbox, beginning as it does prior to the onset of the carnage and following the plight of a small group of survivors.
There's a deaf girl, people bully her for being deaf and everyone laughs, because the American movie high school is a dystopian hellscape and because it buys you instant sympathy for the victim.
In fairly short order we get a lacklustre apocalypse with off the shelf panic, there's a 'leave me here, I only slow you down', and a great showing of 'I am a man of peace but realise now violence is necessary (awesome/manly/American)'.
A tongueless death-cult appear to spring up around 15 minutes after the first sign of trouble, purely so they can show up halfway through to fill the role of 'the real monster is man'.
Remember here that Night of the living dead was made in 1968.
Nine Teen Sixty Eight!
Film makers: Please stop flogging that zombie horse to try and disguise a weak primary threat/save on CG!
Anyway, the performances are awful, Kiernan Shipka in particular feels as if her real threat would be termites, and there is a scene in the middle with a woodchipper that just underscores how utterly unthreatening the primary beasties are. That thing you did there? Yeah, just do that more. Done. Problem solved.
We end with a voice-over that goes something like "Reshoots are expensive, so we will just use a single scene with a voice-over of a half-baked theme we couldn't be bothered actually put in the movie to make it seem like this went somewhere. Also, my boyfriend is alive. Yay"
Utter dreck.
