Silent Retreat

Janey (Chelsea Jenish) is a trouble child. And for her efforts, or lack thereof, is sent off to a remote retreat for nonconformist girls under the guidance of a doctor (Robert Nolan) whose methods are ….a bit radical. The Doctor, and his staff of male accomplices, uses hypnosis and other extreme techniques to get their subjects to comply with their rules that command their patients to be completely obedient through deafening silence. Failure to obey the directions beyond their imposed 'two-strike rule' will result in the subject being fed to a lurking creature that inhabits the surrounding woods.

Janey is hardly the conformist. And her rebellious attitude towards the retreat's rules and regulators eventually lead to unavoidable confrontation. But with other girls simply disappearing, Janey must weigh her defiance against the risks of being overpowered by either the male administrators or the evil yet to be revealed from the outside.

Director Tricia Lee makes her feature film debut with Silent Retreat and shows a high degree of talent in transitioning genres. The film's opening scene is unquestionably horror, but the film switches gears and takes more of a dramatic path for the middle act focusing on Janey's relationship with fellow prisoner Alexis (Sofia Banzhaf) and the regimented retreat rules. We got lost ourselves for a while forgetting for a few moments that there was something mysteriously lurking within the forest. A mysterious something that reveals itself in the film's final chapters reminding us that Silent Retreat is horror plain and simple.

Characters as portrayed by Chelsea Jenish, Sofia Banzhaf and Robert Nolan are perfectly cast as they lend their combined talents to a tale that all three seem committed to pulling together. Lee does not seem to be in rush to allow blood splatter consistently through the film's full 95-minute running time and instead uses her DVD chapters wisely to form a setting and atmosphere that the film will heavily rely upon.

Silent Retreat won Best Canadian Film at the 2013 Toronto After Dark Film Festival, but you can remove the "Canadian" from the award plaque and you would still be left with a viable and enjoyable film worthy of our attention.

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Sent to a retreat in the woods, a troubled woman is sent to a retreat in the middle of the woods where she finds the owners are secretly brainwashing women into being obedient wives and feeding the rejects to a deranged creature nearby and tries to get away alive.

This one was quite an intriguing if really flawed creature feature. Among the better qualities here is the way this one builds up the really intriguing premise of the retreat out in the middle of the woods run by the sinister family that enforces a strict series of rules on them for their beneficial behavior. It's rather interesting how it manages to build this in the first half as there's the rules in play that simply make no sense yet creates an atmosphere here where it's all about ensuring the supposedly-perfect spawning ground for their secret agenda which is one of the more dark and sinister motives here for covering up their tracks, yet still manages to create the kind of fun here wallowing in this chilling atmosphere with the silence, refusal to acknowledge anyone and the general state of forced serenity created makes this a quite chilling set-up. Once it gets to the later half and there's the fun of the creature thrown into the mix that not only makes for a solid storyline addition as well as helping to aid in his mission this one does become a lot more fun with the additional body-count added to the creepiness displayed by the set-up as the first encounter out in the woods rescuing her friend leads to the action-packed massacre of the girls in the cabin as well as the aftermath of cleaning up after it which makes for some even better fun throughout here. As well, that leaves the ending confrontation quite thrilling as well with plenty of fine encounters that are rather bloody and really kick this one up somewhat. These here are what hold this one up over it's few minor flaws present. The main feature holding this one back is the utterly bland and boring beginning half which is quite low on action as it just tends to focus on the setup of the secret cult or her trying to adapt to the rules of the place which are just utterly bland and really keep the film pretty slow-going in this part of the film and keep the creature off-screen during this time. While that occurs, it's also quite a relief since the creature here is a complete joke with many really bad flaws about it, namely the awful look of the thing which is clearly hampered by it's low-budget nature but also the just weak design as well since it looks really lame and has a weak prosthetic look that doesn't help it much even if that wasn't the case. These here really hold this one back.

Rated R: Graphic Violence and Language.

Why the extreme low scores and angry reviews? This movie reminds me of silly late night horror films from the 80s, like you'd see with Elvira. It's almost as if they took 3 or more films and mashed them together. It's odd. It's not perfect.

The simple setting is nice and fits the tone of this idea of a nice quiet place to send delinquent kids.

Then it changes... There's a monster movie, a camp "last girl" gory movie, and a rapey psychological horror movie all suddenly collide into a weird mix. And absurd hypnosis.

The whole thing could have been blah, but the acting of the 2 main girls and some actually well done gory scenes made it enjoyable.

I'm scoring this a bit higher because I just read reviews that gave it a 1 out of 10 (which is way too harsh), then said things they liked. That makes no sense. At least give it a 4 or 5 for those good bits you liked. This movie isn't that bad, so these low scores just seem angry. Some reviews contradict themselves by saying they loved so-and-so in their role, yet scored a 1 or 2. (Perhaps I'm missing some behind-the-scenes drama? Which probably would not matter imo.) I try to focus on the positives, especially online. Spread kindness!

These filmmakers did pretty well with a low budget and lot of hard work. There's a lot of creativity here, maybe unfocused. And the talent shows. Good luck to their future endeavors!

I've heard some good thing about this movie, so I give it a chance (even tho AfterDark movies are usually hit or miss).

While it started out OK, then turned weird since it had no dialog for the first 20 minutes or so (which I actually liked), it sacrificed it's premise for more of a standard movie, because message has to be heard, right?

and the feminist(ic) overtone in this movie are so obvious that it really start to hear your ears. While I have no problems with some feminist tones in movies like Stepford Wifes (original): it had feminist ideas within the story, but it still treated itself like sf horror movie, but in Silent Run? Hell no!

Most of the dialogues consist of usual feminist tropes like "We are so oppressed, no one wants to hear us, man want to change us" to the point that movie become too annoying. Every man in this movie is complete psycho who want women to bi silent, obedient and "perfect" wives for themselves who must be at kitchen (they also want girls for their wives purely based on their looks!). They even showed the "woman in kitchen" mame image treating it like serious thing for brainwashing young girls. I am not even kidding. Creature itself that happens to be in the woods for some reason is also a female (also in sign of feminism).

Robert Nolan is only saving grace, he is really good in most of his scenes. Other two lead actresses are also rather descent, it's not their fault that movie is so absurd.

There are some FX scenes which are well made, descent amount of gore for this type of movie (maybe even too much), some blood. Creature design was descent, but not too original, you'll swear you've seen it in some other movie.

Ending was ridiculous with needless fight scene at the end, because hey, you must satisfy the casual audience (who will probably be bored by then anyway). If movie ended with strong emotional scene that happen before it (also, applause for two lead actresses, it was carried purely on their acting, because script didn't do anything to root for any of their characters), it would end on high note, but nope, let's do the generic fight scene and end the movie.

Honestly, if this movies wasn't "So-obviously-feministic" movie, I would probably like it more, but I really couldn't stand annoyance of majority of lines being "we are so oppressed by those evil man"... or at least keep your feminist views at minimum and don't use your movie as way to express your own socio-political ideas.

Look how Stepford Wives turned out (which I actually liked). It managed to poke at feminist ideas, but it was still enjoyable, creepy and "legit" horror movie. It was never used as a way to spew ideas right into audiences faces.

Silent Retreat (2013) is a Canadian movie that I recently watched on Prime. The storyline follows a troubled young lady who is sent to a unique rehabilitation retreat where she isn't allowed to talk. It is rumored there's a dark past at the rehab center and a creature that eats people in the surrounding woods. When other young ladies turn up missing at the center, the students don't know if they've been released, eaten by the creature in the woods or worse... The new girl is itching to find out what's what and try to free the other girls.

This movie is directed by Tricia Lee (Blood Hunters) and stars Sofia Banzhaf (Splinters), Robert Nolan (Sixty Minutes to Midnight), Jen Pogue (The Masked Saint) and Katie Buitendyk (Total Frat Movie).

I found the first hour of this movie frustrating. The storyline was fairly straightforward with some unique elements. There is some good subplots and character development baked in. The acting, writing and dialogue were uneven and disappointing at times. Even the first few horror scenes, which were limited, were shot too dark and missed the mark. But an hour into the movie the horror elements kick up a notch and you get your first great kill with gore and solid flesh eating. The creature in the woods reveal is outstanding and I was left wondering where that was the entire movie. The conclusion is actually pretty good if you can be patient enough to get to it.

Overall, this has some well executed scenes at the end that make it worth a watch but missed an opportunity to be great. I would score this a 5/10 and recommend seeing it once.