Checked out a new indie sci-fi flick called Silencio at the theater today. And, wow, something went seriously wrong with this one and I’m not just talking about the script. I didn’t know what the film was going in… chalk that up to poor advertising but it’s always cool to see something blind. But what it was turned out to be a bunch of fuzzy-brained nonsense.
The movie stars off by claiming its “inspired by true events”… and then a guy touches a magic space rock and travels back in time, saving his granddaughter from a car accident. You know, as you do in a true story.
The film starts with a rocket launch failure in 1970. The rocket crashes in The Zone of Silence…. a desert region that is allegedly Mexico’s Devil’s Triangle (a bit dustier) where it’s said “most meteors land on earth” and radios stop working, etc. A group of scientists, led by John Noble from the Lord of the Rings and the tv show Fringe, go down to retrieve the debris. That’s where they find the magic space rock that transports Noble in time.
Part of this film is in Spanish… and that’s where the technical disaster hits. The subtitles in the film are off in the first 15-20 minutes. Anything anyone says in Spanish appears in English on screen 10-15 seconds later. At first, I thought this was some kind of experimental film gimmick… like maybe this was the dialog in the character’s heads… what they were thinking and not saying… then maybe it was related to a fractured time line (being a sci-fi movie ‘n all)… but no, after the first major scene, any later subtitles occurred at the correct time. I think someone just screwed up badly… maybe it was just the print… but that’s still a bad blunder.
But that doesn’t kill the film. What kills the film is the bland sci-fi story following the magic time traveling space rock and the criminals who want to steal it. The movie flashes forward a couple decades and now John Nobel has Alzheimer’s (and a sudden case of terrible acting) and his granddaughter and nurse take care of him. A mysterious someone tells her how to recover his mind… and he wakes, sure he has to remember where he buried the magic space rock. But the criminals are getting desperate. Thus… the movie spends a lot of time digging for the rock and then debating who should travel back in time to save who.
This isn’t science fiction and its barely a coherent script either. Magic time traveling space rock with arbitrary rules people seem to make up at the convenience of the script just doesn’t work. Ethical and moral arguments made over and over again, repetitively as if we, the audience, can’t understand what the characters are worried about. People from the past coming back to life seemingly randomly… or maybe not at all. I don’t mind some magical realism but when the movie can’t decide if it’s sci-fi or that, the film just gets muddled.
I probably don’t have to say don’t bother seeing it since I doubt anyone has heard of it or cares. There’s a decent ethical question at the heart of the movie but its so poorly told, it barely matters and isn’t worth the time to ponder it.
Score: 64