And, finally, watched the new Netflix horror flick The Silence. Which has nothing to do with A Quiet Place… honest! This is based on a book published in 2015… so odds are Quiet Place may have been inspired by the book. But this movie wouldn’t exist without A Quiet Place (and maybe even Bird Box).
So, yeah, it seems like we shouldn’t dig random tunnels beneath the Appalachian Mountains since that’s where the carnivorous batlike creatures live. Once released, they swarm and start taking out the East Coast. Since the creatures are attracted to any kind of sound, the humans have to figure out how to survive while making as little noise as possible.
The film follows a family who probably shouldn’t survive the batlike apocalypse but manage to do so by the good fortune of the daughter losing her hearing. So three cheers for sign language… but maybe leave the excitable dog at home and maybe put up sentries since, you know, this is the batlike apocalypse and deranged humans are on the loose too. But whatever… sign language!
There’s a decent cast here lead by Stanley Tucci (action star!), Miranda Otto, and John Corbett. The daughter is played by… hmmm… who was she? It was bugging me… but it’s a gal named Kiernan Shipka who stars in Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (a show I’ve seen a single episode of). They are generally a good cast playing kind of dumb characters. But, as someone once said, if people in horror movies did smart things, there wouldn’t be a movie (but tell that to John Krasinski and Emily Blunt).
The movie is fine for a basic creature feature. This is on the better side of direct-to-Netflix movies as far as basic horror goes. A Quiet Place managed to be a more artistic and well directed creature feature… this one just wants to feature creatures. And that’s fine… not everything has to be elevated. So I found it a reasonably decent film that does what it does with reasonably well animated CGI batlike creatures, a reasonably low-level R-like rating, some good actors playing kind of dumb characters who probably won’t survive must past The End.
So if you liked a good horror movie featuring batlike creatures who hunt by sound, this is an alright production. I can’t say it would appeal to anyone else necessarily… not unless you are big action star Stanely Tucci or Miranda Otto fan. The film is largely a shrug and ninety minutes pass… but I’ve seen a lot worse (like Bird Box).
Score: 81