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.

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 in a car accident and losing both paternal grandparents, 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 Otis out of the car so that the vesps kill the dog. Later, Kelly consoles Ally and Jude. Ally says they all have the skill to survive in silence, due to her deafness.

Hugh leads his family on foot after setting Glenn's car on fire as a decoy. Lynn struggles to keep up, and her coughing puts the whole family at risk. Jude spots a house in the countryside. The family heads towards it and finds a high fence with a locked gate. Their arrival alerts the homeowner, who, unaware of the situation, speaks. Vesps 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 growing inside corpses. Returning home, the tongueless reverend of a cult 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 tongueless cult. Phones strapped to her and placed around the house go off, attracting vesps. The cult members abduct Ally, but Grandma 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 cult members take Ally at knifepoint. Hugh, Kelly and Jude fight back and kill most of the cult, though Hugh is stabbed but survived.

Several weeks later, the remaining Andrews family trek across America and eventually arrives 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, like 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.

Critical reception
As of May 2019, the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, which assessed 25 reviews, reports an approval rating of 24% and an average rating of 4.33/10. The similar website 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.com's Brian Tallerico said The Silence was "a dull retread of ideas explored more interestingly in other films and TV shows". He said, "'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."

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 never 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. 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 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." 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.

Renaldo Matadeen, writing in Comic Book Resources, contrasted The Silence from A Quiet Place, "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 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."