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The Silence (2019 film)
2019 film by John R. Leonetti From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Silence is a 2019 post-apocalyptic horror film directed by John R. Leonetti and starring Kiernan Shipka, Stanley Tucci, Miranda Otto, and John Corbett. The screenplay by Carey and Shane Van Dyke 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 deaf teenager who seeks shelter with her family, and a cult tries to take advantage of her fertility.[1]
Netflix released The Silence on April 10, 2019. It was also released in theaters in seven countries in the rest of 2019, grossing $2.3 million.
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Plot
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A cave research team unearths an unknown species of pterosaur-like creatures, referred to as "Vesps", from a mine. The Vesps violently kill the researchers, fly out of the mine, and seek the noisiest areas.
Ally Andrews, a teenaged girl who lost her hearing in a car accident three years prior, lives with her parents, Hugh and Kelly Andrews, her maternal grandmother Lynn, who has terminal lung cancer, her brother Jude, and their pet dog, a rottweiler named Otis. After she gets bullied at school, she walks home with her new boyfriend named Rob and informs her mother of her whereabouts. Later, Ally catches Lynn smoking and keeps it a secret while Hugh and Ally talk about school before heading off to bed.
At night, news of the Vesp outbreak spreads, the U.S. government declares a state of emergency and asks people to stay indoors and quiet. Hugh recommended the family to put their cellphones on silent mode as they see footage Vesps attacking people and footage of the initial cave attack that released them, shortly before getting interrupted by an emergency broadcast. Ally suggests that they head to the countryside, which is most likely to be quieter since the cities would be packed with noise and infested with Vesps. Glenn, Hugh's best friend, joins them and brings his guns. They set out in two cars, but when they make a pit stop at a gas station, a man tries to hijack Hugh's car, risking the family. 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. As the Andrews family returns to their car, their dog barks, attracting the Vesps. Glenn fires his gun, leading them away from the Andrews, sacrificing himself as the Vesps kill him by eating him alive. To keep his family safe, Hugh lets the dog out of the car to die as it runs out of the trunk to be eaten by the Vesps.
Hugh realizes that the Vesps are blind and hunt by sound after he distracts one with a tire iron. Because of the Vesps sensitivity, the family abandons their car and Hugh leads his family on foot after setting Glenn's car on fire as a distraction. Lynn struggles to keep up, as her coughing puts the family at risk. The family finds a house with a high fence and locked gate after walking for some time. The homeowner, unaware of the situation, comes out, demanding the family to leave until the Vesps rip her apart and kill her. The family uses a storm drain to enter the house. A rattlesnake appears in front of Jude, attracting a Vesp with its rattle as it eats the snake alive. Other attracted Vesps bite Kelly's leg from behind. Hugh distracts them by turning on a woodchipper, crushing the Vesps flying into it, and the family enters the house.
Ally contacts Rob, who tells her his parents are dead. The next morning, she learns that religious cults have sprung up in the wake of the disaster, accusing the Vesps of being sent by God as a divine punishment to purge sinners. The family soon realizes that Kelly's wound is infected, so Hugh and Ally leave to find antibiotics. At the store, Ally discovers Vesp eggs growing inside corpses, but one of the eggs hatches, attracting adult Vesps. Hugh and Ally start a fire with a mop to trigger the store’s sprinkler system as a diversion and they escape the Vesps. As they are walking back, a tongueless reverend of a cult called “The Hushed” tries to recruit them, but Hugh denies the offer, causing him and Ally to leave. They return with the antibiotics and Kelly quickly recovers. Ally learns from the internet that Vesps cannot survive in the cold, prompting Hugh and the rest of the family to head north.
The Hushed find the family's hide-out and the cult leader shows up with his followers. The Reverend reveals to recruit Ally after claiming she’s fertile, meaning that he doesn’t just want to rape Ally, but he wants to use her as a sex slave to repopulate the world. Hugh, furious that The Reverend wishes to use Ally as a breeding machine, brings out the shotgun, forcing the cult to leave. Later at night, Rob texts Ally that he’s safe and he lets her know he is headed north to a place called "The Refuge" where other survivors are staying at to avoid the Vesps. She texts him where it’s located but her internet connection goes offline before she can get an answer.
As Hugh and Kelly rest, a noise startles them both and they find a little girl at the door in a state of shock. After letting her in, they find she is a member of the cult after finding her tongue cut out and noticing bruises all over her neck and chin. Phones strapped to her and placed around the house go off, attracting Vesps as Hugh and Jude barricade the windows. Hiding from the Vesps, some of the cult members break into the basement and abduct Ally. Lynn runs outside to help her and holds Ally's captors down. As Lynn screams, the Vesps kill her and the captors while Ally escapes. The remaining cult members kidnap Ally in the rain but before The Reverend could rape her, the family fights back and kills the cult as Hugh kills The Reverend by bludgeoning him to death with the shotgun.
Weeks later, the family treks across the U.S. and arrive at The Refuge located in Alaska. As Ally reunites with Rob and kill the remaining Vesps with arrows, she wonders whether if the Vesps will adapt to the cold or if humans will adapt to a soundless lifestyle like she did when she lost her hearing, and guesses that only time will tell.
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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.[2] In the following August, additional cast members were hired.[3]
Principal photography began in Toronto in September 2017.[4]
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 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."[5]
Release
Netflix released The Silence on April 10, 2019.[6] Global Road Entertainment originally acquired in December 2017 the U.S. distribution rights to the film and was supposed to be released theatrically on December 7, 2018.[7] The distributor had financial troubles, and in a failed attempt to avoid bankruptcy, Global Road pulled the film from the release schedule and sold distribution rights to various films, including The Silence, to Netflix.[8]
The film was also released in seven countries around the world, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Bolivia, Singapore, South Korea, and China, grossing over $2.3 million.[9]
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Critical reception
Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 30% based on 37 reviews, with an average rating of 4.2/10. 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."[10] Metacritic assigned the film a score of 25 out of 100 from four critics, reflecting "generally unfavorable reviews".[11]
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".[12] RogerEbert.com's 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."[13]
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Social commentary
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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."[14] 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.[15] DiMarco also criticized Shipka's ASL grammar, and others pointed out plot holes related to her character being deaf.[16]
Comparison to A Quiet Place
The Silence was compared to A Quiet Place, a 2018 horror film with a similar premise.[17] 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. Quartz's 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.[8] 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."[17][18]
The Guardian's 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."[19] Decider's 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.[20]
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 Silence's deaf teenaged 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."[21]
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References
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