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The Silencing (Amazon Prime) hits its notes of suspense and murderous intrigue in an able enough manner, but never walks deeper into its wooded setting to discover anything close to new.
The Gist: In The Silencing, a grizzled Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is Rayburn Swanson, an embittered ex-game hunter who grew a conscience when his daughter went missing. Five years on since she disappeared, Ray ekes out a living as the manager of a vast game preserve named in her honor, still doggedly distributes “Missing” fliers in town, and still keeps a bottle of rotgut close at hand. Alice Gustafson (Annabelle Wallis), back in town after a taste of big city learnin’, is the unpopular local sheriff with an even less popular deadbeat brother named Brooks (Hero Fiennes Tiffin). When the bodies of young women start turning up out in the wilderness, the tension starts to simmer between Sheriff Gustafson, Brooks and his drug buddies, the tribal police at the nearby reservation, and Swanson’s desperate, fading hopes of finding his daughter. And why do these poor dead girls all have scars on their throats?
Gustafson discovers an arrowhead lodged in a tree, and Swanson sees a figure on the cameras that monitor his preserve, shrouded in a ghillie suit and brandishing what look to be homemade spears. When he traipses out to the back forty to face down the killer, Ray gets speared in the chest for his trouble, and Gustafson is no closer to determining who this maniac is, even as more girls disappear. As we meet more people with potential motives, and Sheriff Gustafson executes some utterly awful on-the-job decision-making, The Silencing ambles to its resolution as Swanson searches for some kind of redemption.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? For moody, murderous weirdness in a backwoods town done better, check out Jeremy Saulnier’s trippy, violent 2018 entry Hold The Dark (Netflix). For improvised weapons, another rural setting, an elevated level of suspense, and a totally zooted performance from Zahn McClarnon, there’s Braven (also Netflix, and also featuring Jason Momoa and a fantastic Stephen Lang). And finally, for murderous suspense in an isolated region and cops that seem outnumbered and outwitted, there’s the psychological horror of Fortitude.
Performance Worth Watching: Longmire, Westworld, even S. Craig Zahler’s batshit crazy 2015 western Bone Tomahawk: wherever Zahn McClarnon appears, he’s always on point and dependable. Here, he does his best with the one-note grudge on his police officer character’s shoulder.
Memorable Dialogue: Swanson and Officer Blackhawk have history, mostly because Karl married Ray’s ex-wife. But when Swanson is wounded, he seeks his frenemy’s aid. “Karl,” he calls from the backseat of his cruiser, where he thinks he’s bleeding out, “You’re a good man.” Blackhawk is more circumspect, but there’s the shimmer of resignation in his eye. “You’re just saying that ‘cause you think you’re dying. We can go back to hating each other after you’re all stitched up.”
Sex and Skin: None. No smiling, either.
Our Take: A frowny-faced suspense exercise with a range of functional performances that are dutifully to the letter and totally set on simmer, The Silencing plays like an extended episode of any basic cable murder drama. If you still pine for Jaime Lannister, you might become invested in the plight of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s emotionally-wounded ex-hunter, who lugs around a boozy monkey on his back instead of a gold hand. If you’re a huge head for The Tudors, maybe you’d like to see one of Henry VIII’s wives don a wide-brimmed sheriff’s hat and cruise around some rural routes in a Chevy Tahoe police interceptor. Annabelle Wallis says things like “show me the autopsy report” and “You check upstairs!” with appropriate levels of authoritative gravity. But they’re invariably stock “small town sheriff” lines that seem to have been picked at random out of her big hat. The Silencing sets up its game board, puts the pieces on it, and listlessly pushes them around until it comes to a close. By then, if you’re still awake, you might mumble, “Oh, it was that guy the whole time? All right, whatever.”
The angle on the series of murders at the center of The Silencing that grants this thing its name is somewhat novel, and occasionally the film even remembers to give it some screen time. Coster-Waldau executes a strained, emotive wince with aplomb. And there’s a brief explainer from a couple minor characters about the atlatl, a spear-throwing device with ancient roots, but its mechanics are never shown off with enough detail to really satisfy in any “oddball murder weapon” kind of way. Ultimately, The Silencing doesn’t say anything much at all.
Our Call: SKIP IT. There are a zillion prestige television programs built of the same murders and moving parts as The Silencing, and many of those offer more style points to boot. Somebody needs to find Nikolaj Coster-Waldau something better to do than to sleepwalk through basic cable filler like this.
Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges
Watch The Silencing on Amazon Prime
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