The Silencing movie review & film summary (2020)

So far, so predictable; add in dialogue like, “Out here that badge don’t mean shit, lady,” and you start wondering if this movie’s going to put ANYTHING new on the table. I mean, Pront shoots and stages all this stuff with slick facility, and the Dane and the two English actors really put their back into playing gruff rural ‘Muricans, or maybe Canadians (things never come off as all that specific), but one does feel one’s seen all this before.

Well, “The Silencing” does indeed put something new on the table, a killer dressed in a costume that looks like an overgrown Muppet, or maybe that Easter mascot from “Toni Erdmann.” It’s big and it’s furry and it must be hard to get around in, or I guess it would be hard to get around in if the movie adhered to real-life physics, because whoever is inside this particular costume has no problem running like hell or executing tricky knife maneuvers. Another new thing it does is make Alice so thoroughly unethical that it’s impossible to maintain a rooting interest in her, even though the movie insists you ought to.

Nowadays it seems when European filmmakers want to make pictures in North America, it’s always some gritty backwoods blood-drenched drama or thriller. Same with young actors like the Fiennes fella wanting to play black-eyed scruffy snotty miscreants. Is this some wayward pursuit of a kind of authenticity? Because what it is, ultimately, no matter how much competence is brought to bear to such exercises, is tiresome. To paraphrase Waylon Jennings, Are You Sure Lubitsch Done It This Way? Those unconcerned with such production details might find this a credible way to kill an hour and thirty minutes, on the other hand.