Film Review - A Place Called Silence (2024)

Horror is an interesting genre for me, although it is not my favourite because I am not easily scared. I find true horror to be close to reality—so real that it could happen to me or the ones I love.

A Place Called Silence, while not explicitly a horror film, is a dark and seedy thriller. The film is about the disappearance of several high school girls. During the search for them, they start being found dead. The murders shock the local area. However, all might not be as it seems on the surface, as the murders may be connected to dark secrets from the past.

Jimmy Carter once said, “Silence can be as deadly as violence.” This quote could not ring truer when it comes to the film A Place Called Silence. The film expertly portrays its themes of complicity associated with being silent and the cycle of violence. These themes are established from the very beginning and don’t let up until the credits roll. While you could say that the film over-explains things and shows too much, I found that, especially near the end, the message was impactful and gut-punching.

I was horrified at times, and I loved that. There are scenes of bullying that are just cold and mean, and they are presented that way too. While not perfect, I found Sam Quah’s direction to be strong. Not everything works, and I do find the first half to be lacking and oddly paced. However, by the second half, all those issues washed away, and I was just flabbergasted by what I was witnessing.

As I have said, this film is not perfect. The first half can be rough at times, with moments of weird editing that seemed to occur solely for the sake of it. Additionally, there were a couple of cheap jump scares that I found to be lazy. Especially as later scenes are truly terrifying, the jump scares felt like they were part of a different film. Finally, my last critique is that I found the pacing to be uneven in the first half. It would zoom at 100 mph and then slow down. Similar to the other issues, this is resolved in the second half, but it did take me out of the film.

A Place Called Silence is not perfect, but when this film hits its groove, it’s a cold and calculated thriller with a lot to say. When everything was being revealed, I was fully invested and wanted to see how deadly silence can be.