A Quiet Silence

The phrase "timing is everything" is hardly radical, but in the world of concept horror, it can truly make all the difference. Take, for example, Tim Lebbon's novel The Silence. Published in 2015, it tells the story of an average nuclear family in England trying to survive a plague of otherworldly monsters who hunt by sound. Since one of the children is deaf, their fluency in sign language serves as a helpful tool in outlasting the enemy. They hole up in an empty farmhouse and do their best to not make a sound.

Yes, I essentially just described the plot of John Krasinski's 2018 sleeper hit A Quiet Place. Much like how Suzanne Collins allegedly knew nothing about Battle Royale when penning The Hunger Games, A Quiet Place was also seemingly developed without any knowledge of Lebbon's book. It also had the good fortune to get its cinematic release well before director John R. Leonetti's adaptation of The Silence, which dropped on Netflix with the ill luck of being seen as a cash-in of both Krasinski's film and the similarly premised Bird Box.

All this is to say that The Silence has a lot agains it from any casual viewer's perspective. Having enjoyed the novel and Leonetti's Wish Upon, I was rooting for it.

Quick Plot: When a pair of researching spelunkers head deep into a Pennsylvanian cave, an undiscovered species of bat-like creatures emerge, blindly chewing their way through the entire Western Hemisphere. Stuck in the middle is a typical American family headed by dad Hugh (top ten crush list Stanley Tucci), mom Kelly, kid brother Jude, and key to their survival, 16-year-old Ally (Kiernan Shipka). Just three years earlier, a car accident robbed Ally of her hearing, meaning she's now used to living in the titular silence with her ASL-fluent family.

This is a huge convenience, as vesps (as the creatures are dubbed) hunt purely by sound. Joined by Kelly's cancer-ridden mom, Hugh's BFF Glenn, and a lovable but barking Rotweiler, the Andrews hitch up their vehicles and head to more rural roads, signing and whispering (even though, you know, they're signing) along the way. 

Naturally, this being of 2019's societal collapse subgenre, human-eating CGI bat things aren't the only enemy on the hunt. With less than thirty minutes left to spare, The Silence tosses in a creepy cult led by a tongue-less reverend with his eye on the apparently fertile Ally.

Let me get this out of the way: as you might have deduced by my intro, I feel a little sorry for The Silence. Director Leonetti has proven to be pretty hit-or-miss in the horror genre. For as much as I despised everything about his Butterfly Effect 2, I've been a genuine fan of his more recent output (Annabelle, Wish Upon). Throw in a cast that includes Stanley Tucci's hairy arms and Sally Draper and what's not to love?

Well, unfortunately for me, this movie.

Lebbon's book is told from the alternate points of view of Hugh and Ally (younger in the novel than Shipka in the film), providing a solid foundation of the Andrews. Ally in particular is a smart, resourceful girl, having transformed her deafness into the very key to her family's survival. A Quiet Place has its flaws (WHY DOESN'T ANYONE WEAR SOCKS GODDAMNIT?) but one of its greatest strengths is young actress Millicent Simmonds, hearing-impaired herself and playing a character with the same condition. Aside from the right politics of such a casting choice, Simmonds is wonderful, and you completely buy the struggles and strengths she deals with.

I ADORE Kiernan Shipka and continue to see great things for her future. That being said, she is not the right choice for this role.

Shipka can hear just fine, and the movie just never comes close to making us believe otherwise. Characters use sign language while whispering loudly, rendering it rather useless in the scheme of things. Then again, when the final act introduces us to a cult who has to demonstrate their menace with a sharpie and legal pad, you might be more forgiving.

The Silence boasts a ridiculously impressive cast and not a terrible creature design (although as someone partial to the cuteness of bats, the vesps to be are less scary and more like Pee-Wee's Playhouse's Pteri recovering form a meth addiction). Had Bird Box and A Quiet Place not come out mere months before, it would probably still be disappointing to me but more a "meh" rating from the masses. Instead, most audiences will see it a ripoff, and an incredibly mediocre one at that.

High Points

Pat Kiernan alert! Anyone who enjoys morning news on New York 1 knows how comforting the sight of the cheerful Canadian can be. So The Silence has that going for it

Low Points

I could harp on the fact that you can barely see what happens in any of the night scenes, but let me take this space to instead complain about the lack of any real development of time. We have absolutely no idea how many days/weeks/hours it is between the vesps' arrival and the Andrews' flight, nor does the film give us any kind of overview of how far they've driven or where they're even going. Is it weird that a small cult has developed and is already looking to repopulate the earth? WHO KNOWS?

Lessons Learned

Rattlesnakes know their way around upstate NY farmhouse sewers

iPads offer plenty of post-apocalyptic functions, but being used a map is not one of them

Really talented deaf teenagers don't even need to face you to read your lips

Curious Credits

Most films based on novels include that note in the opening credits, yet The Silence completely omits Lebbon and goes straight to screenwriters Carey and Shane Van Dyke (the latter the director of the surprisingly decent Paranormal Entity and the less so A Haunting In Salem). I don't know what Hollywood politics were involved with such a choice, but in the wake of most viewers watching this thinking "here's the Asylum adaptation of A Quiet Place", it seems like a strange missed opportunity of defense

Rent/Bury/Buy

Tim Lebbon's The Silence is an enjoyable horror novel with sympathetic characters and some strong monster passages. John Leonetti's The Silence is a messy genre film that doesn't capture its heart. Read the book, and if you need a Stanley Tucci fix, do what I do every other weekend and rewatch Burlesque.

Board Now

Guys, I am totally a grownup.

This fact dawned on me recently as I sifted through my Instant Watch queue and thought, "Maybe it's finally time that I give Poultrygeist a try." Troma's low budget telling of zombie chickens had been on my radar for what felt like an eternity (back when I was in my TWENTIES, no less) but I had just never reached the point of actually watching it. 

So I did.

But I didn't.

See, I generally know what I'm getting with a Troma movie. There will be boobs. There will be crass comments (often about boobs). Silly but often sweet practical effects. And probably more boobs.

As any horror fan with a video store membership in the '80s knows, Troma is what it is, and Lloyd Kaufman wouldn't have it any other way. But as I began my journey into Poultrygeist, I found it hard to enjoy the charm. "You're the best dry humper in school!" comes the first line, which is fine and almost sweet in its own way. But as soon as a character (named Arby, and his girlfriend is Wendy, because CLEVER) responded with, "My dad's a retard," I said to myself, 

It's not that I'm above Troma dialogue. I'm angry at myself for not seeing The Boy Next Door in the theater, for goodness sake. It's just that I took a moment to realize that at this point in my 33 years on this planet, I have grown past certain things, certain things that might have been so charming (and far less offensive) in my youth.

An adult. That's what I felt like.

Naturally, I celebrated my newfound maturity by turning off Poultrygeist and queuing up what I assumed to be an Asylum cash-in on Ouija, The Ouija Experiment.

Quick Plot: Brandon is an obnoxious film student (who immediately sheds any lingering cred by claiming that not only is Twilight about ghosts, but that it actually good) hanging out with his airhead friend Shay, her beefy womanizing boyfriend Calvin, Calivn's sister L'nette and pal Michael. As most groups of twentysomethings in Dallas do, they spend a few evenings playing with a non-Parker Brothers version of a ouija board.

Not, mind you, a Wee-Ji Board, which may be the most exciting knockoff thing I've ever discovered while shopping at Five Below.

Michael lays out the rules of the oujia, which include the all-important 'Never leave the room without saying goodbye' commandment that because it's repeated no less than four times, will inevitably be broken at least twice. 

What could possibly go wrong?

In this case, the quintet releases the ambiguous spirits of a murdered little girl named Gracie, her drowning foe Joseph, and her mother Lisa. The ghosts have all sorts of mean qualities, like spilling to Shay that Calvin's been cheating her and turning Michael's manly bathroom into a pink paradise. C'mon, people, you can't expect Lions Gate-esque terror when your major special effects involve your actors moving a pointer on a ouija board and not one but TWO jump scares that are simply Halloween decorations in storage.

As you can no doubt piece together, Israel Luna's The Ouija Experiment is not going to be shortlisted for the Oscars (or heck, People's Choice Awards) anytime soon. But you know, in the realm of found footage ghost stories made for less money than was used to cater Craft Services for the REAL Ouija, it has some charm. And by the way: considering Ouija starred young good-looking actors who probably don't eat, that's saying something.

To my surprise, The Ouija Experiment was made in 2011, several years before even the Asylum would have thought to capture a name. Granted, I figured this out for less than stellar reasons: one character references Paranormal Activity 1 AND 2, and there's a scene that involves a couple laughing and mimicking what was, in 2011, the hot YouTube "Hide Yo' Kids, Hide Yo' Wife" viral sensation.

The Ouija Experiment, you can say, is kind of dated. And not actually scary. And filled with amateur actors who give it their all, but clearly didn't have the screen experience or proper direction to know how to make a line like "I LOVE  YouTube" sound even mildly believable. If, however, reports about the budget being in the $1200 range are true, then I find myself in an awfully forgiving mood. I've seen worse films made for far more money. It doesn’t mean The Ouija Experiment is deserving of your time (for most of you with kids or cats or jobs or dishes to wash, it’s really far, far less important) but eh, it could have been much worse.

Film criticism at its finest!

High Points

There's something admirable about how director Luna was able to generate ghost suspense in spite of the utter predictability of his story. We've all watched enough of these kinds of films to know that when a little girl appears at the end of a long hallway, she's going to snap and sprint towards us or that when the camera is fixed and a character is facing it, something ominous will appear far behind him in the specifically empty frame. All of these trite touches are alive and thriving in The Ouija Experiment, but I'll still give Luna credit for building to these scenes skillfully enough that the sudden jerks of action occasionally really do work

Low Points

On the flip side, I can think of a lot better ways to generate creepiness than to film an actor literally reading about spirits from the computer screen in front of him

Lessons Learned

Always say goodbye

Always say goodbye

Always say good--

Eh, it’s not like you’re going to listen to the rule the characters repeat thirty five times during the course of the film’s 90 minute run time, so why bother?

Rent/Bury/Buy

I wouldn't particularly recommend The Ouija Experiment to anyone. It's a predictable and decisively unremarkable entry in a crowded field of found footage. I feel like it's a genuine compliment to say that while I was watching it, I likened it to Paranormal Entity in being an Asylum movie that was better than it needed to be. Now that I know it WASN'T an Asylum production,I guess I'd convert that opinion to dubbing it a better movie made under two weeks with a $1200 budget than it needed to be. Make of that what you will.

Everybody Walk the CGI Dinosaur

Seeing The Asylum logo at the start of a film typically promises a few things. The movie you are about to watch has been made cheaply. It has been filmed incredibly quickly. If the title includes a 'Vs.', you can probably bet on seeing an '80s pop icon or two in the cast. If the title is suspiciously similar to a recent, fairly successful mainstream film, the odds are high that the movie you are about to watch will not be particularly good (with the occasional Paranormal Entity-esque exception, of course).

Now let's say you see The Asylum trademark but do NOT see a Vs., an '80s pop icon, or any clear and obvious connection to a modern blockbuster?

Well sometimes, those are okay. Not great--never great. But here and there, a studio that prides itself on low cost and high quantity can, with a thoughtful writer or director on board, produce something of genuine entertainment.

Quick Plot: A tense (just kidding) prologue gives us a full-on Jurassic Park-ish intro as we see a bunch of expendable science types slaughtered by a dinosaur puppet. Just when you get excited by the idea of puppets in an Asylum film, our credits roll and the threat of bargain-priced CGI becomes real.

Treat Williams, a man for whom my lust has never waned (Hair's Berger then, Handsome Dad In Asylum Movies now), is Gabe Jacobs, a widowed firefighter with a teenage daughter named Jade. As you would expect from any Asylum movie where a teenage daughter to single dad is a character, Jade spends the majority of her screentime rolling her eyes and texting because, you know, TEENAGERS.

Gabe's brother or friend or daughter's former babysitter or something is a security guard at a fancy high school auditorium/Biotech company of sorts hosting a black tie presentation. CEO Ronny Cox is proudly announcing to a whole bunch of extras that in addition to curing burn victims, his research company has now brought dinosaurs back to life. Naturally, this leads to a bunch of terribly rendered CGI creatures breaking out of terribly rendered CGI glass cages.

The moment I knew I kinda liked Age of Dinosaurs was quite clear. As chaos reigns inside the theater, what with the virtual dinosaurs leaping and biting and hundreds of spectators yelling and dying, the action cuts to the lobby where Jade has been sitting in order to text (TEENAGERS!). When a dinosaur leaps at Jade, she lets out an understandable scream. Cut, of course, back to the loud, death-filled interior of the auditorium where Gabe immediately stops, his brother/friend/security guard/friend not quite explained in the film screenplay makes eye contact and shouts "I heard it too!"

As an owner of four cats, I know whose meow is whose, at least most of the time. Is it wrong of me, however, to assume that it's hard/impossible to identify an individual's scream, particularly when there are a whole lot of other shouts/dinosaur roars/bodies being crunched by roaring dinosaurs noises going on?

Asylum is not a studio known for its quality, but it generally understands its audience enough to know what they need. When it's going for high profile concepts, I usually find the style a little too obvious (sorry, Sharknado) but some of its quieter output can be rather fun. In the case of Age of Dinosaurs, director Joseph J. Lawson isn't working with the best material and resources (you know there's a problem when even the news reporter character stutters) but he finds the right light-but-not-obviously-ridiculous tone to make the 90 minute running time what it should be: dinosaurs amok.

This is the kind of film that has Treat Williams earnestly beg a helicopter pilot to "Step on it!" and, even better, "aim for that pterodactyl!" Naturally, his zinger when the aiming pays off? 

"Bye bye birdie."

And that's not even The Winning Line!

High Points

This is also the kind of movie that has extras flee a theater, only to focus on a large chubby man when a shrill female scream sounds. I approve

Low Points

Sadly the energy of Age of Dinosaurs withered away once it rounded the hour mark. Maybe it was the clear budgetary limitations that became more obvious once the action moved out of a confined space (observe the 'dinosaurs are hunting humans in the mall!' which really just turns into 'people run out of a mall/now a dinosaur is running through an empty mall!' effect), but the film just kind of flatlined after its main novelty wore off

Lessons Learned

Scientific intellectuals really like their Jameson(s)

Guns don't kill dinosaurs. Axes and hockey sticks kill dinosaurs

Never drive on a quarter a tank of gas. You'll come to regret it when chasing dinosaurs on the streets of LA

When a teenager passes through your bar and shouts "Run!" you should listen

The Winning Line

"Now there's a woman who has curves in places most women don't even have places!"

I think this is a compliment, but gentlemen, a word of advice from a lady: don't ever use it to impress one

Rent/Bury/Buy

As you would expect from anything produced by The Asylum, Age of Dinosaurs isn't actually very good. That being said, this is a fun enough time killer that could easily make you smile here and there while folding laundry or reorganizing your DVD collection. Hit it up on Instant Watch the the moment strikes.