Silence (film)

The Silence is a 2019 horror film about flying pteranodon-like creatures who escape an extinct cave system and attack humanity.

7 out of 10 stars.  This is a creature feature and it’s pretty good.

The film begins with a group of cavers discovering an unknown cave system in Pennsylvania.  But they immediately unleash a swarm of pteranodon-like flying carnivores on the world.

Hugh Andrews runs a construction company with his best friend Glenn whom he’s known since childhood.  Glenn spends a great deal of time with the family, especially since Hugh’s parents were recently in a car accident that killed them both and rendered his oldest child, his daughter Ally, deaf.  He has a son Jude and wife Kelly.  Kelly’s mom Lynn, who has terminal cancer, also lives with them.  Plus they have a big rottweiler.

The family hears of these creatures, which are quickly nicknamed Vesps (the logic of which escapes me), on television and decides since the creatures are attracted to sound they’d be better off alone in the country.  So they follow Glenn in his SUV out of town toward the mountains.  First they make a pit stop at a gas station for gas.  Ally is in charge of the dog and the dog begins barking in the parking lot.  This attracts the attention of a man in the parking lot with a gun who points it at Ally and the dog and is about to shoot to shut him up.  Glenn shows up and shoots the man and disarms him.  Then they all leave right before the vesps attack the man who is now incapacitated.

Their plan quickly goes to crap when they discover a few hundred thousand other people had the same idea and the roads are clogged with vehicles.  Glenn takes them off road and they follow down a narrow country road through the woods.  That turns out to be a mistake because a herd of deer drive Glenn off the road and he is trapped under his overturned SUV at the bottom of a deep ravine.  Although they try to get him out, they can’t, so Hugh and the family plan on going for help.  While they are in their SUV Ally senses the creatures and tells everyone to stop.  The vesps attack their SUV and their dog keeps barking.  Down in the ravine, Glenn hears this and fires his gun several times to attract them.  They flock to Glenn and away from the SUV.  Hugh lets the dog out of the SUV and closes the door.  We never see the dog again.

They sit in the SUV for a long time until Hugh finally gets out.  He begins walking away but one of the vesps hears him and comes to attack the SUV again.  So Hugh picks up a crowbar and throws it a few yards in front of him.  The vesp attacks.  And Hugh now realizes he needs a big sound to mask the sound of them walking away from the SUV because they can’t stay in there all night.  He climbs down the ravine with Lynn’s lighter and sets Glenn’s SUV on fire.  All the vesps in the area flock to it.  This gives his family a chance to escape.

They hike through the woods although it’s difficult for Lynn who has trouble breathing and who occasionally coughs.  Eventually they hide in a tunnel and Kelly is attacked by a vesp who injures her leg.  They continue and reach a cabin.  The fence around the cabin is rigged with rattling cans to make noise when anyone touches it and when the old lady who lives there hears them she comes out shouting with her rifle.  Big mistake.  The vesps get her pretty quickly and now they have a cabin.

Hugh and Ally have to hike to town to get antibiotics for Kelly’s leg.  When they reach town they find that the vesps have taken over the buildings and there are no people except for a creepy cult who cut out their tongues.  Ew.  That cult follows them back to the cabin.  They send a young girl to the cabin who rigs all of their phones to sound off permanently, attracting all the vesps so the cult can kidnap Ally whom the cult leader believes is “chosen”.  Or maybe he’s just a pedophile.  Anyway, Lynn attacks them and when Ally gets free, she screams, bringing all of the vesps down on the cult.  Hugh and Kelly fight the remaining cult members to free Ally but Hugh is stabbed.  Hugh, Kelly, Ally, and Jude go back to the cabin.

Days or weeks later, the family hikes up the mountains with plenty of supplies.  Ally contacts her friend Rob who eventually joins them (his parents are dead).  They discover the vesps don’t like the cold.  Ally and Rob hunt vesps with bows in the woods and demolish their eggs which they lay inside of animal carcasses.

7 out of 10 stars.  The first time I watched this I wasn’t a fan, but it grows on you.  I really like the way they show you how the vesps look and communicate as well as how they channel sound to their ears.  Creepy.