The Silencing

STORY: A vicious serial killer is on the loose in the sleepy town of Sawbill. Hot on his trail is a reformed hunter whose young daughter went missing years ago and the new country Sheriff. Can they catch him before he strikes again?

REVIEW: ‘The Silencing’ opens with a chilling long shot of a young woman’s body floating in a beautiful stream between the mountains of Minnesota. This totally sets the stage for its dark and gritty narrative in a mysteriously eerie town. In this sparsely populated county, everyone knows each other and yet there is always a sense of unease and an undercurrent of fear lurking in the air. A mystery killer has been at large killing young women for reasons best known to him.

Former hunter and now the guardian angel of the town’s dense wildlife sanctuary, Rayburn Swanson (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of ‘Game of Thrones’ fame) has lost his teenage daughter, five years ago. His only mission now is to save the animals by warding off the hunters and look for his missing daughter. Rayburn has long given up on the local police to find his girl. But the new county Sheriff Alice Gustafson (Annabelle Wallis) is hopeful that she will crack the case that has kept the town on the edge for years. While she has her task cut out, she faces resentment from the locals and her troubled younger brother Brooks (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) with criminal leanings only adds to her woes. This is also symbolic of the fact that everyone in Sawbill is broken in some or the other way.

Director Robin Pront and writer Micah Ranum successfully build the grisly atmospherics with the help of their ace cinematographer Manuel Dacosse. They don’t shy away of bringing us very close to the killer, who is always disguised and camouflaging in the woods. The deep woods and the town’s dark spaces are very well utilised like a character on their own. They symbolise the horrific nature of the crime and its perpetrator. What also works are the interpersonal relations between the characters and the human drama amidst all the crime. The relationship between Alice and her brother is especially interesting due to their conflicting individualities. The action gets quite savage along the way, but doesn’t go overboard. The telling of the story is adequately tense. And while Pront uses familiar tropes of a serial killer saga, powerful performances, a consistent pace and the chilling set up, make all the difference.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau leads as a ruthless hunter, who is on a path of redemption after losing his daughter. He brings conviction to his physically challenging role of a resentful yet heroic Rayburn. His passion to save defenseless and innocent animals is to compensate his failure to save his daughter, who despised his hunting. Annabelle Wallis also pulls off a restrained act as the Sheriff, who has to fight multiple battles to do her job. Hero Fiennes Tiffin and the rest of the characters are well cast. However, it would have helped if some of the key characters had a slightly detailed backgrounder. The biggest drawback of ‘The Silencing’ its anti-climactic climax though. The build-up is extremely effective and unpredictable, but the big reveal in itself isn’t all that explosive.

That said, ‘The Silencing’ is one of those serial killer sagas that’s not so much about what it is telling you, but how it is telling you. And that’s where it makes quite a killing.