The Silence

When America is invaded by a race of bloodthirsty beasts who hunt by sense of sound, a family must learn to live in complete silence if they hope to survive.  Trapped like a box of, uh, birds, one must adapt or die in this quiet, uh place.

Adapted from Tim Lebbon’s novel – which predates you-know-what and also-that-other-thing-with-a-similar-premise – The Silence drops on Netflix at a time when audiences apparently can’t get enough of families playing high-stakes variations on See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil.

This time, the CGI beasties are a race of subterranean winged monsters, accidentally released from a cave system beneath the Appalachian Trail to apocalyptic effect. The Silence almost bears more in common with The Birds than it does A Quiet Place, with a sinister cult popping up to deliver shades of Stephen King to the story.

The humans include Stanley Tucci, Miranda Otto and Kiernan Shipka (hot off’ve The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina S2), whispering their way through a film which is half ASMR video, half post-apocalyptic drama. Even before the plot necessitates that they whisper every line of dialogue, the cast seem bored; especially Tucci, phoning it in from the same booth Malkovich used to make Bird Box. 

While some of the action does make novel use of the concept – most notably a sequence in which an evil cultist hides mobile phones around the survivors’ safe house – The Silence is a hideous bore, with dingy Walking Dead-esque cinematography and sound design which (largely due to my own aversion to ASMR) made me retch.

The Silence is not an entirely bad film, but it is a redundant one, with nothing much to say for itself, and even less worth listening to.

The Haunting of Sharon Tate

How many times does poor Sharon Tate have to die before audiences leave her alone? For better or worse, famous serial killers get the biopic treatment all the time (most notably in the imminent Zach Efron as sexy Ted Bundy feature), but none focus so extensively on the victim and their ordeal as the crimes of Charles Manson – depicting the brutal slaughter of Sharon Tate over and over again.

The latest of these thinly-veiled exploitation movies is The Haunting of Sharon Tate, which re-tells the story of the Manson Family murders as though it were a Blumhouse supernatural home invasion movie; with heavily pregnant movie star Tate (Hilary Duff) suffering horrific premonitions of her own death at the hands of Manson’s cult.

Director Daniel Farrands plays fast and loose with history, and the events as recorded in the likes of Helter Skelter, including his recasting of Tate as the traditional horror heroine believed by no-one, even in the face of mounting evidence. While this grants Tate more agency in her own story than reality itself allowed, it also has the unfortunate effect of painting several of the other victims in a less than sympathetic light; negligent, stupid and mean at best, actually responsible at their worst.

Even within its pocket universe, The Haunting of Sharon Tate is irresponsible and exploitative, playing Tate’s terror for cheap shocks while trying to pass it off as catharsis and offering mealy-mouthed ponderances on ‘fate’ as an excuse for what this really is – a cheap cash-grab trying to get in on the recent interest in Manson and his crimes. Alas, it too was beaten to the punch, by the similarly cynical and nasty (but technically far more competent) Wolves at the Door. 

While the film does try to say something new about the Manson murders, and its attempts to grant Tate some agency and dignity are appreciated, those things simply aren’t this movie’s to give – and ultimately does Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger and Steven Parent a massive disservice. Not least in its shockingly wooden performances, which do nobody any favours – but especially not Sharon Tate herself. Talk about adding insult to injury.

In spite of limited good intentions and solid storytelling, The Haunting of Sharon Tate is an insulting failure, trampling over the lives of real people and manipulating tragic events for its own purpose. There’s a place in cinema for true crime biopics and depictions of real life atrocities, but this probably isn’t it. Low-budget horror filmmakers, just let Sharon Tate be.

Night

Independent cinema doesn’t get much more independent than Nicholas Michael Jacobs’ Night; a single-location, two-person character piece about a young girl and her sadistic balaclava-wearing kidnapper.

Abducted off the street at night, Judy (Gianna Jacobs) is tied to a chair and her mouth taped shut; forced to sit helplessly while kidnapper Adam (Mister Jacobs himself) confers with his live stream subscribers as to what he should do with her. She should be grateful for the film’s lack of a Special Effects budget – while Night is a grim, nasty little movie, it is restricted by an inability to show any real gore or dismemberment.

Still, Hostel-level splatter isn’t something that the film even really needs. Gianna Jacobs is so young that her situation and palpable fear is already discomforting enough for the audience, the sense of tension at fever point long before Adam breaks out the knives.

As such, the film plays to its strengths, keeping to a brisk 65 minute runtime (which, even then, is padded out with long, Funny Games-esque takes of nothing much happening at all) with minimal action or moving pieces. Shot entirely from the perspective of Adam’s webcam, it’s pure found footage and sticks with the conceit to the end.

Its flaws are somewhat inevitable then, including the dodgy acting and regrettable dialogue (it’s probably for the best that Judy’s mouth is taped up for most of the film), but entirely worth powering through for the impressive mood and atmosphere cultivated throughout the night.

Dumbo

Do you believe an elephant can fly? If you didn’t before, here to make the pill easier to swallow is Disney’s Dumbo; the latest live-action remake of a classic animated tale. No stranger to such exercises, Tim Burton helms the piece, assisted by a photorealistic Dumbo and his latest muses, Colin Farrell and Eva Green.

This is Disney’s loosest adaptation of an original animation yet; sweeping the remake part out of the way in the first half hour before moving on to an all-new story – Dumbo’s Adventures in Evil Disneyland. Purchased by Michael Keaton’s sinister entrepreneur, Dumbo is teamed with aerial acrobat Eva Green who is to ride the elephant in flight – because who cares about flying elephants unless there’s a hot, scantily-clad lady flying around upon it? There, she and her fellow circusfolk hatch a plan to free Dumbo and rescue his mother, before Michael Keaton can have her turned into a pair of elephant-skin shoes.

Eva Green flying around the place on a baby elephant is as unnecessary to Dumbo’s act as it is the story, but Burton and screenwriter Ehren Krueger have to pad the tale out somehow, and without the talking animals (Timothy is gone, and there’s no way we were ever getting the crows in 2019), they’re forced to rely upon the human element. Or, in this case, invent one.

Green and Farrell are both fine as the acrobat and the elephant trainer, but the latter’s children don’t work at all, and feel like little more than doe-eyed exposition devices only kept around to motivate Dumbo or move the plot forward. Be thankful for Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito, then, who lend the film some much-needed energy and charm, even in the face of a witless script and dull, inevitable storytelling.

Like Keaton’s evil Disneyland, Dumbo is a cynical, listless operation, manipulating audiences’ nostalgia and love of CGI animals with big blue eyes. Some things do work (most notably Burton’s take on the pink elephants sequence) and the film is visually on point (if lacking in the flair we might once have expected from the director), but it’s a lazy, money-grabbing chore.

You’ll believe that an elephant can fly, but you won’t care.

SHAZAM!

In the same universe as a murderous Batman once tried to stab a miserable Superman to death with a Kryptonite spear, there exists a wizard named Shazam! Having spent eons looking for a chosen one worthy enough to bestow his power upon, Shazam’s (!) hand is forced when the evil Doctor Thaddeus Sivana (Mark Strong) suddenly attains the power of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Unable to carry on holding out for a hero, Shazam (!) imbues one Billy Batson with his mighty power, allowing the moody orphan to transform into a stacked, thunderbolts-and-lighting-powered Zachary Levi. Together with his adoptive family, Billy must learn to control his incredible new abilities and defeat Sivana, before the villain can claim Batson’s powers as his own.

It’s been on the cards for a while now, with the inspirational Wonder Woman, tonally all-over-the-place Justice League and chest-thumpin’ Aquaman, but Shazam! is the DCU at its family-friendliest, with actual jokes, wisecracking and a Freddie Mercury needle drop. Fans of the Synder-verse as it was will likely baulk at this bubblegum entry into a hitherto dark and glum pantheon of movies – but it’s hard to deny that this is one of the DCU’s best movies so far.

Not since Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man has a superhero’s origins tale nailed just how fun it can be to possess the powers of a god, and Shazam’s (!) strongest part is its midsection, in which Batson comes to terms with his powers, figuring out just what he can and can’t do. Levy is a delight and a revelation as Captain Marvel Shazam, effortlessly selling the wonder and innocence of his being a teenager bottled up in the body of a Superman. Mark Strong works wonders with not a lot, bringing a genuine sense of threat to an otherwise paper-thin role. And even the kids are alright, with Asher Angel and Jack Dylan Grazer bringing plenty of heart to their respective roles of Batson and his superhero-obsessed ‘brother’.

However one connects with Shazam! will depend on what one is looking for from the superhero universe; a light-hearted, fun, action romp which bears more in common with The Guardians of the Galaxy or Spider-Man: Homecoming than it does Batman vs Superman or Man of Steel. Although a guy does still get thrown from the window of a skyscraper by a horrifically ugly CGI beast, so it’s not a complete wash-out.

Some will decry Shazam! as the Disney-fication of a hitherto portentous and epic cinematic universe but, really, isn’t there room for both? In the same universe as a murderous Batman once tried to stab a miserable Superman to death with a Kryptonite spear, there’s also fun for, and with, all the family. And, ultimately, there’s nothing more Comic Book than that.