The Silence (2019)
There is a special kind of cynicism reserved for streaming cash-grabs, and John R. Leonetti's 2019 creature feature The Silence truly takes the biscuit. It is, without exaggeration, essentially a poor, straight-to-streaming tribute act to A Quiet Place. They even threw in a deaf child protagonist to really hammer the point home, just in case you hadn't already clocked where the inspiration came from. Watching this felt exactly like someone being handed ten pints of beer and told to sit down and write their own version of John Krasinski's hit. The result is a shameless, hollow imitation that completely misses the tension and emotional grounding that made the original work so effectively.
You'd think with a cast featuring the reliably brilliant Stanley Tucci, there might be at least a glimmer of quality to cling to. And fair play to the man, he genuinely tries his absolute best to inject some gravitas into the proceedings, playing the patriarch of a family on the run from creatures that hunt by sound. But Tucci is completely let down by a script that is, frankly, utter rubbish. The story is relentlessly predictable, marching through every expected survival beat with all the imagination of a paint-by-numbers exercise. Not a single surprise. Not a single genuine moment of tension. And when your monsters look like they were rendered on a PlayStation 2, the suspense evaporates pretty quickly.
What really pushes this picture over the edge from merely mediocre to a complete mess, however, is the baffling narrative choices buried in the second half. At one point, the family stumbles upon a fully formed, robe-wearing cult that has apparently sprung up to worship the creatures. The problem? The invasion only started a few days prior. The idea that a dedicated apocalyptic doomsday cult could organise themselves, acquire matching outfits, and establish a functioning compound in such a ridiculously short timeframe is just laughable. It is a glaring plot hole that exposes how little genuine thought went into the world-building. You can't build tension in a world that follows no internal logic whatsoever.
I've sat through some genuinely baffling blockbuster misfires in my time. I reviewed Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) on here, and that film at least has a certain loud, chaotic spectacle to it, even if it's a mess. The Silence doesn't even have that. It has nothing to offer. No thrills, no scares, no memorable set-pieces, and no emotional investment to speak of. It simply exists, slouching along for its runtime and daring you to stay engaged.
Leonetti has delivered a sluggish, unoriginal slog that relies entirely on the goodwill generated by better films to justify its existence. It's a frustrating watch from beginning to end, the kind of film that has you checking your phone well before the credits roll. Tucci deserved far, far better than this, and so did anyone who sat down expecting even a halfway decent creature feature.
One and a half stars.
Rating: ★½ | Year: 2019 | Watched: 2026-07-19
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon US
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