In the vast, often oversaturated landscape of creature-feature horror, a film can easily get lost in the noise. Such was the fate for John R. Leonetti’s 2019 film, The Silence. Arriving on Netflix with a premise that drew immediate and perhaps unfair comparisons to a certain other sensory horror hit, it was largely dismissed by critics as a derivative B-movie. But to write it off is to miss a deeper, more unsettling layer. Viewed not just as a monster movie, but as a stark allegory for modern anxiety, The Silence transforms from a simple thriller into a chillingly prescient prophecy about the end of community and the terror of a world forced into isolation.
The Plot: A World Gone Quiet
For those who haven’t seen it, the premise is brutally simple. A scientific expedition in an uncharted cave system unleashes a horde of ancient, flying creatures dubbed “Vesps.” These pterosaur-like monsters are blind, hunting solely by sound with a ferocious, piranha-like efficiency. In days, their swarm spreads across the continent, bringing society to a standstill. The only way to survive is to be utterly, completely silent.
Our entry point into this apocalypse is the Andrews family, led by a particularly compelling character: their teenage daughter, Ally (Kiernan Shipka), who is deaf. The film opens before the global catastrophe, establishing her world. She is a capable, adjusted young woman who lip-reads and uses cochlear implants, but she still feels the subtle isolation of being different within her own family and at school. This character detail is the film’s masterstroke. While the hearing world is thrown into a state of terrifying disorientation, forced to learn a new way of being overnight, Ally is already an expert in navigating a silent world. Her disability becomes her, and her family’s, greatest survival advantage.
The family, including her parents (Stanley Tucci and Miranda Otto) and young brother, flee their suburban home for a remote, sound-proofed sanctuary in the countryside. Their journey is a harrowing set piece of tension, as every creak of a floorboard, every crunch of gravel, and every stifled sob could mean a swift and gruesome death.
Beyond the Monsters: The True Horror of Isolation
On the surface, the Vesps are effective enough monsters. Their design is suitably prehistoric and unnerving, and the sequences of their attacks are well-executed, playing on the universal fear of making a noise when being hunted. But the creatures are merely the catalyst. The true horror of The Silence lies in what their presence does to humanity.
The film brilliantly visualizes the collapse of communication. Televisions and radios go dead, the internet fails, and the simple act of speaking to a neighbor becomes a death sentence. This is where the film’s allegorical power ignites. We live in a world of constant, deafening noise—a 24/7 news cycle, social media notifications, the endless hum of digital life. The Silence asks: what if it all went away? And the answer isn’t peaceful; it’s horrifying. The fabric of society, built on the constant exchange of sound and information, instantly unravels.
The Andrews family’s retreat to the countryside is a desperate attempt to preserve their micro-society. They learn and use American Sign Language (ASL), a skill that Ally already possesses. In these moments, the film becomes a poignant story of a family rediscovering each other. The crisis forces them to bridge the communication gap that likely existed long before the Vesps arrived. Stanley Tucci’s performance as the determined father is the emotional anchor, his every silent gesture brimming with the desperation to protect his family, not just from monsters, but from the creeping despair of their new reality.
The Cult in the Woods: The Most Frightening Twist
Just when you think the film has settled into a survivalist narrative, it introduces its most controversial and, I would argue, its most brilliant element. The family discovers that they are not alone in their remote refuge. They encounter a group led by a charismatic, sinister priest (Billy MacLellan). This cult, known as “The Hushed,” has taken the mandate of silence to a terrifying new extreme. They have not only embraced ASL but have also ritualistically severed their own tongues to ensure they can never make a sound and attract the Vesps.
This is where The Silence transcends its genre trappings. The Hushed are not just another group of antagonists; they are a dark mirror of the Andrews family. Both have adapted to the new world through silence, but where the Andrews family uses silence to preserve their love and humanity, The Hushed use it to create a new, fanatical religion. They don’t see the apocalypse as a disaster, but as a divine cleansing—a “test” from God. And in their twisted theology, Ally, a “maiden of silence,” is their prophesied leader.
This cult represents the ultimate perversion of adaptation. It’s a stark warning that when society collapses, the void isn’t just filled with chaos, but with dangerous new ideologies. In our own world, we see how periods of crisis and isolation (a global pandemic, for instance) can fuel the rise of extremism and conspiracy theories. The Hushed are a literal, visceral manifestation of this phenomenon. Their willingness to mutilate themselves and others in the name of their belief is far more chilling than any screeching Vesp, because it is a horror born entirely from the human psyche.
A Prophecy for the Isolated Age
It’s impossible to watch The Silence today without the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, which began just a year after the film’s release. The parallels are unnerving. A mysterious, fast-spreading threat from the natural world forces everyone indoors. People are afraid to breathe the air (or make a sound) for fear of an invisible danger. Society grinds to a halt, and communities are fractured. We were all, in a sense, forced into a version of silence, communicating through screens, isolated from human touch.
The film’s depiction of a family unit grappling with this new reality feels prophetic. The struggles to communicate, the fear of the outside world, and the desperate search for a “safe” place are all themes that resonate deeply with our collective recent experience. The Silence captures the specific anxiety of a contagion—not a virus, but a sound-triggered predator—that turns other people into potential vectors of death. Every stranger is a risk, because you don’t know if they will stay quiet.
Final Verdict: A Flawed But Resonant Gem
Is The Silence a perfect film? No. Its pacing can be uneven, some character decisions are questionable, and the CGI for the Vesps can feel a little generic at times. The comparisons to A Quiet Place are inevitable, and while that film is arguably a tighter, more artfully crafted piece of cinema, The Silence, based on the earlier novel by Tim Lebbon, explores different and in some ways more complex thematic territory.
To dismiss it as a cheap knock-off is to do it a disservice. The Silence is a film with something to say. It’s a story about disability as strength, about family as the last bastion of civilization, and about the terrifying fragility of the social contracts that bind us. It’s a film about the end of the world not with a bang, but with a shush.
So, if you scrolled past The Silence on Netflix years ago, consider giving it a second look. Turn down the lights, turn up the volume (the sound design is crucial), and let yourself be drawn into its quiet, desperate world. You might just find that its most terrifying moments aren’t the attacks from the sky, but the profound, echoing silence that follows, and the unsettling question it leaves hanging in the air: in a world stripped of all noise, what monstrous new beliefs would we be forced to hear?
