The Silenced

The Silenced, or the title literally translated as "The Lost Girls" have all setups you want to see in a mystery boarding school/orphanage movies. It includes mysterious rules, secret room, long dark halls, and confused school girls. This movie set in Japanese occupation era in Korea, where an all-girls sanatorium/boarding school to prepare them to go to Tokyo for a scholarship while recovering their physical health. But, little did a sickly girl who are new in the house, students are missing one by one.

While all seems perfect and I am ready to love this, I encounter myself in a confusing situation where I can't differentiate all of the students' faces. They wear uniform, they share same hairstyle, quite same body type, and I am trying enough to focus on their facial features to determine who's who and I give up and only knows who is she after her name is mentioned. Although this is very subjective and minor to the whole movie, I feel this situation withdraw me to join the buildups to the climax. But ... only if the buildups are good.

Another problem is, I think the movie is too dragging to explain or showing something. It's good at first because we have some bases to know what you may expect in terms of gore/jumpscares/violence you may encounter in the movie, but some depictions (like the main character having treatment in bed) happens for at least five times without any major development. It makes me difficult to follow the narration and to build the anticipation to the climax.

When the climax is happening, I was quite entertained, but it's too stale after watching many buildups, so it just felt flat. I like it more if the buildups can be more focused on one theme and cut the drama scenes. With lots of conflicts without any sort of increasing tension (and I don't know who's who), it seems that the climax (with quite obvious resolution) can't justify the movie as something worth watching, compared to movies with similar themes.

Even though it's quite low in my perspective, for those who like some glimpses about what's happening in Japanese occupation (although it's probably not quite accurate either), you'll like this one. I, for instance, like how they used Korean and Japanese language interchangeably in the movie to depict what is the status of the language in that era. More than that, I guess you can have yourself a try if you like this kind of movie, but I'm sure it's easy to find another movie that have better buildups, and you can differentiate the actors' faces.

The Silenced is by no means your ordinary supernatural film featuring teenage students in a school of Victorian setting. Sure, it has the elements above featured in the film. But Director Lee Hae-young bravely mixed and revolutionized them into a horror tale of colonialism. Sadly though, it never reached its potential to stand out and will leave the audience divisive.

Set in 1938 during the Japanese occupation in Korea, a sick young girl named Ju-ran/Shizuko (Park Bo-young) is transferred into a girls' boarding school that is disguised as a sanitorium to recover her health. Through its tame opening, there's an eerie and creepy atmosphere as we follow Ju-ran entering the boarding school. When Ju-ran arrives, the film successfully distinguishes itself from typical boarding school horror films. All of these kids look fine. There's no signs of supernatural being in the school. But the chills that I got tell my senses that something's wrong and glued my eyes to the screen.

As Ju-ran settled, the film seems more straight to a slow drama where she bonds with her new friend Yeon-deok (Park So-dam) and tries to adapt to her new environment. However, Lee Hae-young smartly inserts some disturbing moments and behaviors from Ju-ran surroundings that reminding us this is still a horror film. Those moments are greatly balanced with the drama of Ju-ran and Yeon-deok's bonding and made the first act a pleasant time to watch.

Slowly, however, Ju-ran started to sense something is wrong with the school from her friends and teachers as well as her treatment. I really appreciate how Hae-young decided to not approach the films with typical jump scares, but rather, with slow-burning atmosphere building to terrorize the audience. This is achieved through most of the supporting cast performances that make the audience experience spine-chills and how the abnormal moments are inserted in unexpected places. Unfortunately, these potentials are never achieved as the film second-act being too slow, dwindling anywhere without moving the story forward added with its beautiful yet misplaced music cues that lose the film tension.

Still, even when the story didn't move forward, the character did develop and there's still an emotional attachment that audience could relate to. I personally love on how Ju-ran changes not only from her health but socially as she became braver to interact with others and her speech being more fluent. Park Bo-young, who's performance is popular from A Werewolf Boy (2012), shows more range of talent in this film. The breakthrough are from Park So-dam though, who already attracts me from its charming aura yet a cool demeanor that is so similar from Parasite (2019). Praise also needs to be given to the production team and cinematographer Kim Il-Yeon that beautifully captures the visuals, making the film bearable to watch even with its flaws.

The audience might be divided on how the mystery was resolved. As I mentioned several times above, this is by no means a typical Victorian horror. There's a social context mix with a history of colonialism that truly creates a horrifying moment for those who could relate. However, for those that don't, the revelation could be off-putting and the third act could appear to be ridiculous and over-the-top. Personally, I did felt the latter but I can't deny that I enjoy it and still have sympathy for all of the characters thanks to its strong development in scriptwriting.

The film is a mix-bag. However, if you're bored watching typical horror films and try to find a slow-burning terror with great characters and cinematography, then The Silenced might be a recommended choice for you.

It isnt a good movie or bad movie. I thought it would be horror but it really just thriller and mystery the acting was good especially at the end of movie. And its kinda boring.

The plot is indeed a bit all over the place, especially in the second half, but I loved the movie nonetheless. The acting was very convincing and I felt very sympathetic to the girls. While not strictly a horror movie, this is a must see.

It was perhaps a good film, but its style was a bit confusing. Individual scenes were suddenly cut off for no apparent reason, with the missing part shown much later in flash-back.

And unless you have a lot of friends or acquaintances that are oriental you might have trouble keeping track of the characters. (The old "they all look alike" cliché.)

For an OWM (old white male) like me, it especially didn't help that not only did most of the characters look very similar, they all wore identical clothing. The scenes that were fast paced didn't give me enough time to figure out who is who.

Just to make it worse, each character had two different names (their real name and their school name), and to top it off, one of the names was used for two different characters.

Being able to recognize the difference between Korean and Japanese might help too.

I suspect I'd like it better if I watched it a second time.