THE SILENCE (O-RVZ MOVIE REVIEW)

It's a horror-thriller film newly released in Netflix and is directed by John R. Leonetti. The movie is based on a novel from the same name and follows a story about a world who are attacked by a swarm of bat-like creatures. The movie stars Stanley Tucci, Kiernan Shipka and Miranda Otto.

To sum it up, the whole movie is basically "A Quiet Place" 2.0 with a little mix of "Bird Box". Same plot that revolves around creatures who can only hear even the slightest sound and kills the people within their reach. Stanley Tucci plays the patriarch of the family and tries to protect his family from being killed by these unknown bat species. There is even a member of the family that is also deaf but this time she can talk which she got from a past accident. There's nothing really special about the story of this movie since "A Quiet Place" already covered that. It's hard seeing this movie without comparing it to that film because essentially, the story, the characters, and the creatures are really much the same. The first half of the film was okay. It provides some thrills and suspense. The only difference that this film had is that these bat-like creatures were somewhat mutated or evolved from something unlike being an alien creature. They hunt in a swarm and were really deadly because the moment these creatures goes to your skins, they quickly tear the flesh. They didn't explain so much about the background of these creatures so it kinda opens up some backstory to be told in the next sequel if there is any. I just don't get why a film with this kind of premise has to be involved with some secret cult. It's understandable for a series to do this (e.g The Walking Dead) cause the story has to evolve somewhere due to its long seasons other than them deadling with zombies but on a film with limited running time (e.g Bird Box), I just really don't understand. I mean, you have already the perfect conflict for the film and they could have emphasized more to it. This is the same thing that I also didn't like about Bird Box cause it kinda cheapens up the thrills and this movie retreaded that same direction. If you're gonna make a movie about creatures or monsters, just focus on them and give them all the highlight from the whole movie cause at the first place, they are the reason why people are watching this kind of films.

OVERALL

THE SILENCE is a lesser version to "A Quiet Place". The movie is still thrilling but it slowly fades away at the end of the film. There are no groundbreaking achievements of this film speaking of its technicalities unlike what "A Quiet Place" has achieved. Who's to say which one is the original since the novel which this film was based on released in 2015 and the "A Quiet Place" production only started in 2017. It might be John Kransinki (director of A Quiet Place) got his inspiration from reading that novel but one thing is for sure, he and his film is the far superior in terms of story, direction, thrills, editing, and creature design.