Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Annabelle Wallis, Zahn McClarnon, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Lisa Cromerty, Leland Assinewai, Kayla Dumont, Shaun Smyth, Jason Jazrawy, Brielle Robillard, Melanie Scrofano, Charlotte Lindsay Marron, Patrick Garrow, Mark Charles Cowling, Heather Stevenson, Tiahra Tulloch, Danielle Ryan, Caleb Ellsworth-Clark, Josh Cruddas. 

We have learned through hundreds of years of written storytelling, and thousands of years of oral narrative, that the woods and forests, whilst beautiful to look at, hold many secrets, untold dangers, and creatures that hunt for the sheer exhilaration of the chase, and to feed on those unsuspecting souls who pay no heed to the warnings, or are clouded by the romanticism that has filled their heads of the beauty in the trees.

Still the sense of romanticism pervades, the stillness, the getting back to nature, the dream of being isolated from society for perhaps a week or two holds sway in the mind; but the danger remains, the thought of getting lost, both physically and spiritually, is close to our everyday belief of community, and it is this moment between the two that The Silencing seizes its opportunity to be heard.

Film fans and romantics love the sweeping motion of the forest beneath the camera’s lens, it is there to remind us that it is safer to fly above the canopy than it is to be surrounded by it, for in that movement lays secrets and grief, and one that the team behind the Nikolaj Coster-Waldau led film, The Silencing, take full advantage of.

However, the film itself, whilst noble, lacks punch, the perpetrator of the crimes and the confrontation is easily identified even if the viewer finds their concentration wandering, which in the end makes the swift justice met out by Rayburn, Mr. Coster-Waldau, to be deserved, but not in keeping with the idea of redemption. Of course, that is the point, the forest never forgets or forgives, the darkness of the wood is enough to drive anyone to such measures.

In the end the film is about revenge, rather than isolation, of accepting that we as a species have lost our way in the concrete jungle and have neglected our rightful place in nature, and to that we must feel the sorrow and conflict in the heart of Rayburn, his antagonism toward Native American police officer Blackhawk, played diligently and with an aura of calm by Zahn McClarnon, and the grief he has carried with him since the abduction of his daughter five years before. In effect The Silencing is a nature-bound version of Death Wish, just one that escapes the totality of the main character’s descent into rage.

A decent enough film, but one lacking the empathy required to make it more than just a film to sit through.

Ian D. Hall