Film Review: "The Silence" (2019)

1 1/2 out of 5

Just like how there are good movies and bad movies there are good directors and bad directors. My first experience with director John R. Leonetti was with his debut Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. I was probably thirteen and I only made it about ten minutes. He's since made several other awful movies like Annabelle and his magnum opus Wish Upon, which is so amazingly terrible it's the spiritual successor to Troll 2.
Now Leonetti is back and at Netflix, a studio who's resume is becoming more respectable with films like Roma, but who are ultimately best known for genre schlock like Bright. This director and this studio are working together in an obvious attempt to fart out an Asylum-like version of A Quiet Place (as a follow up to their other Asylum-like A Quiet Place rip off Bird Box)? You have my attention, Netflix.
Like other PG-13 Horror-lite Apocalyptic thrillers this one has a silly monster who’s presence is  summed up in one line of exposition, a family in peril, and a rural setting because it's cheaper and easier.
In this one we have little bat monsters called Vesps who have somehow managed to maintain a huge population in an underground cave for millions of years. They've evolved to have no eyes and rely on sound so *spoilers* just be quiet and they can't find you. Like other cave dwelling animals you'd assume they'd have some issue with photosensitivity what with them being stuck in a cave for millions of years, but nope, they just fly around in the sun drinking up those rays with their pale albino skin like it ain't no thang. As far as movie monsters go they're innocuous enough and do what they need to do: be poorly animated and swirl around eating people who've never seen an Apocalyptic thriller before. How they managed to live for a millennia's worth of time to grow a population this big with no defined food source is anyone's guess; they're ravenous and presumably need a lot of calories to fly around attacking the entire eastern seaboard but I'm over-thinking it. This is the kind of movie and kind of monsters meant to make preteens shriek at a slumber party.
The characters are the stock standard for this kind of fare and pretty much die off in the succession and manner you'd expect. Whether it's zombies, monsters, the invisible suicide monsters of Bird Box or these Bat-things you know how this goes - establish family, end world, leave city, find cabin, leave for supplies, slough off characters when necessary, one or two characters left at the end to close on a positive note. Voila!
Netflix's other entry in this genre, Bird Box, looked like a studio film where as this has a strong Syfy Original vibe. It's slightly better than Sharknado 3 but not by much. The monster and set up are too close to A Quiet Place to be ignored. Bird Box might've taken the idea of a sound based monster and swapped it for one that is vision based but the idea is the same and this doesn't even bother going for another switch out, say smell/touch/etc. The screen writer is not so surprisingly known for penning such Asylum classic Transmorphers 2 and directing Titanic 2. Bird Box added in characters who assisted the monsters and this, being a hodge podge of pre-constructed ideas, takes that as well but turns it into a Christian-esque cult called The Hushed. If you've seen The Mist you get the gist.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Wish Upon is a perfect masterpiece. Leonetti is a clueless director who makes odd choices and when it hits just right it's the best unintentional comedy. If you haven't watched it yet go do it, I cant recommend it enough. This.... ehhhh....not so much.
There are some chuckles to be had, mostly at the expense of characters you know are doomed from scene one like John Corbett, who's whole backstory and role in the film is farted out in one chunk of expository dialogue between a father and son at a gas station only because Corbett was going to die heroically two minutes later. Corbett gives his sacrifice the kind of bravado and weight you would employ when letting someone cut in line at Subway, almost like his character knew what kind of movie he'd been stuck into. You half expect him to say "Hi I'm sacrifice-guy and I'm here to die" before swaggering to his death.
With less than twenty minutes left our main characters are attacked by the cult, grandma sacrifices herself, and everyone leaves the cabin to find some sanctuary up north where our monsters freeze. It's wrapped up in a bow with our lead teens hunting some Vesps with a bow and arrow, and a voice over that says "who will adapt first, us or them!?"
It's easy to pull your pants down and spray a film like this with hot poop, I know I have been, but this isn't that abysmal. It's bad, for sure, but is it good-bad? That's where I'm stuck. Stanly Tucci is always fun even in the worst of films and I never felt bored which is saying a lot. The cult is funny and so are all the copious clichés.
If you want a fast food meal that will only mildly upset your stomach then I'd recommend this. Also, if you have a kid who has an interest in horror but they aren't ready for Hereditary then throw this on. That's what's good about Netflix and also bad: this is cheap, easy, and casual.
Oh yeah, and go watch Wish Upon. It's a crap masterpiece.