By: Keaton Marcus

DISCLAIMER: IF YOU ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 14, YOU MUST ASK YOUR PARENTS IF YOU ARE ALLOWED, IF THEY SAY NO…IT MEANS NO!

Netflix is starting to really grow. After their monster-hit, "Bird Box" which debuted on the streaming website last year, they stuff the film industry with new films such as Beyonce's "Homecoming", "Isn't it Romantic", "The Perfect Date"--and much, much more. Most are successes, and a chunk of them have solid quality--and then there are the films that just plain out flop. The latter is a perfect example of John R. Leonetti's newest horror picture, "The Silence" which opened to Netflix in early-April, hoping to become a cult classic, especially when Academy Award winner Stanley Tucci stars in the picture.

Leonetti is known for directing low-budget horror movies such as 2014's "Annabelle", and 2017's "Wish Upon"--while he even produced "Insidious". Generally, his small, couple of films showcase a few scares--but in the end--land with a resounding thud. Then, Leonetti decided that it would be fun to completely rip-off 2018's "A Quiet Place", and the aforementioned "Bird Box" with "The Silence". The film feels like a prequel to those particular flicks, which could turn out interesting--but the plotting and storyline feel so contrived, and so compelled to create another hit, with a very similar background. The performances are occasionally strong, but the few action sequences, and especially the suspense--are lacking in great areas.

Despite the 90-minute run-time, audiences will still feel like watching a terrible, long epic-- if Leonetti and the crew were trying to make the doomed flick "fun", or "entertaining"--think again--the right response is pure boredom. The film starts off with Ally--a deaf, young girl who lives with her respectable family; and while the kick-off is from time to time promising, "The Silence" cuts right to the apocalypse during the first 15 minutes of the movie--turning the place from happy, little town to madness--terrorized by creatures that look like bats and birds combined with the monsters from the "Alien" franchise. Once again copy-catting the beasts from "A Quiet Place"--these certain creatures hunt with sound, as they are deaf--just like the leading character. In "A Quiet Place", one of the children is a deaf girl--who seems like the only hope for the family--in "The Silence"--it seems exactly the same.

As mentioned, the cast was led by the award-winning Stanley Tucci--who plays Hugh Andrews, the father. Clearly, "The Silence" was trying to create a father-daughter sub-plot between Tucci's Hugh and Shipka's Ally, which is again, dangerously close to John Krasinski's role in "A Quiet Place". The sub-plot never works well--generally courtesy of the dreary screenplay and dastardly derivative plotting. The result is that Stanley Tucci's performance is competent and occasionally impressive--but even the great actor cannot save a film less entertaining than watching cement dry. Even worse, another strong performance wasted is Kiernan Shipka's newest outing--and while the sign language is consistently clever--audiences can't help but compare her to many other horror film daughters. The remainder of the cast cannot help but squeak in a few words between the loud, watered down PG-13 violence.

The final verdict is: Netflix's "The Silence" features a pair of strong performances from Stanley Tucci and Kiernan Shipka--but even a talented cast cannot save the film from becoming a derivative, boring slog that suffers from a tired screenplay, and shoddy direction...$KIP IT

By: Keaton Marcus

There is no box office info because the film provided is produced by Netflix, released for streaming only.