Mark Reviews Movies: THE SILENCING

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 13, 2020

We can overlook some narrative flaws and logical shortcomings in a mystery story, as long as the puzzle is intriguing, the characters are engaging, and/or the ultimate answer to the mystery makes at least some kind of sense. None of that can really be said of director Robin Pront's The Silencing—well, except for the part about the narrative flaws and logical shortcomings.

There is some promise to the setup of the tale and the assorted characters involved, but Micah Ranum's screenplay would rather play a game, filling this story with distractions, misdirection, and almost as many red herrings as there are supporting characters. The whole thing has one purpose: to keep us from figuring out who the killer is for as long as possible. If the movie has to obfuscate all of the clues and make characters do nonsensical things in order to prolong that revelation, such cheap storytelling tricks—in addition to a few more—will just have to do.

Somewhere in Minnesota, Rayburn Swanson (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) runs a wildlife sanctuary in the woods. He was once a locally infamous hunter, using nasty and deadly traps to catch game, but his daughter disapproved. That changed his outlook on animals, but other things didn't change. He was and remains a heavy drinker, even though a trip to the liquor store ended with his then 14-year-old daughter going missing. Five years later, the girl still hasn't been found.

At the start, a young woman's corpse is found in the woods, but it's not Rayburn's daughter. Sheriff Alice Gustafson (Annabelle Wallis) is on the case, and clues in the forest point to a horrifying prospect: Whoever killed this woman hunted her first.

The story's promise comes early, with the frightening actions of the killer, yes, but, more vitally, with the introduction of these central characters and the politics of the area in which they live. As generic as Rayburn may be as a character, a guilt-ridden alcoholic who becomes determined to catch the person who may have abducted and/or murdered his daughter and is definitely killing other women now, it's at least something with which to work. He's not willing to give up on his daughter being found, even though his ex-wife (played by Melanie Scrofano) wants to have her officially declared dead.

The sheriff, too, has some baggage. Her younger brother Brooks (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) has lived his entire life in this town, near a reservation for a Native American tribe. Alice, though, went off to pursue her education and career after their parents died. She has succeeded, but after suffering abuse from his foster parents, the brother has become a drug addict. Also guilt-ridden, the cop wants to save Brooks from the misery she believes her absence may have created.

There's a sturdy backbone here: the killings and their horrific nature, the transparently flawed but driven characters, and the backdrop of a politically and culturally divided area. On his surveillance monitors for the sanctuary, Rayburn happens to see a teenage girl being hunted by a figure in heavy camouflage, and that's when the plot kicks into gear, while all of the more intriguing elements of this story stall.

Rayburn saves the hunted girl and begins his own hunt for the killer. Alice investigates the killer's weaponry—arrows flung by an ancient form of handheld launcher—and finds a possible connection to the local drug kingpin, who operates within the reservation. Almost immediately, the story unfortunately dismisses the potentially provocative dynamic between the town and the reservation, as the resulting tension is only of the jurisdictional variety.

The characters, too, are mostly pushed to the side. Rayburn is suspected briefly but mostly just follows some conveniently appearing clues. As for how our protagonist becomes a suspect, that comes from a terrible decision on the part of Alice, who reveals herself to be a most corrupt cop and odious person. The odd thing isn't what she does, since the movie establishes a rationale for it (The only real information we get about the character), but it is how Ranum somehow believes that motive is a justification for and a reason to sympathize with the character's actions. It isn't, and every proceeding scene with the character is wholly tainted by the knowledge of how much pain, misery, and death she was willing to let slide and unleash.

As for central mystery, the identity of the killer is a genuine surprise, although that's not really a compliment. The revelation of the murderer seems randomly assigned, with a motive that's inexplicable (The killer's explanation isn't actually one). It does, though, fit perfectly into the pattern of The Silencing, which abandons most signs of internal logic.

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