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SILO
Director: Marshall Burnette Cast: Jeremy Holm, Jill Paice, Jack DiFalco, Jim Parrack, Chris Ellis, Danny Ramirez, James DeForest Parker, Rebecca Lines, Daniel R. Hill, Reegus Flenory MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:16 Release Date: 5/7/21 (limited; virtual) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 6, 2021 Silo aims for much more than its restrictive premise and limited backdrop offer. In the movie, a teenager named Cody (Jack DiFalco) becomes trapped within a mound of corn, crushing and slowly suffocating him, in a grain silo. With nothing for him or anyone else to do but wait for a rescue effort, screenwriter Jason Williamson and director Marshall Burnette seem to scramble for conflict and purpose in this story. Some of it works, especially when the story focuses on the claustrophobic helplessness of Cody's situation. He becomes trapped after an unaware Junior (Jim Parrack), who runs the farm where Cody works, lets his father (played by Chris Ellis), who suffers from dementia, start the silo's machinery. A farmhand goes under the corn. Cody becomes stuck at the waist and, as he tries to free himself, up to his torso. Even the smallest movement could send him sinking. The story primarily is a waiting game, as the nearest rescue team is hours away from the farm. Cody's mother Valerie (Jill Paice) rushes to the scene with her asthmatic son's inhaler. Junior evades letting the cops or Valerie know that his father was responsible. A volunteer firefighter named Frank (Jeremy Holm) arrives, throwing a line to keep Cody from sinking and offering moral support. As for conflict, the main one involves Frank's history with this family. He's an alcoholic, whose drinking resulted in the drowning death of Cody's father. Valerie blames him and can't let go, and Frank, played with tough conviction by Holm, is determined not to let history repeat itself. Much of this, though, seems fairly aimless. Valerie has a spiritual/existential crisis about all the grief she has to endure. Junior waxes nostalgic about the old simplicity of farm life. A lot of side players offer support, which paints an optimistic view of people in crisis, but there simply isn't enough meat to these characters or this story to care about them beyond the terror of Cody's predicament. In between the scenes of waiting or stewing, a lot of melodrama unfolds as a result the shallowness of Williamson's characterizations and plot. Burnette stages Silo with an admirable sense of place (Everything looks ironically idyllic) and an intimate view of these characters (plenty of close-ups amidst the wide shots of the farm), but the flimsy story and thematic intentions here don't support that approach. Copyright © 2021 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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