Originally published October 2016

The Silenced is a Korean horror film I found while looking for some good horror movies on Netflix this October. So you may already have an idea where this review is going. However, I certainly didn't eliminate The Silenced because it was "bad", per se. I put some bad movies on those lists, such as the Jaws sequels and Troll 2, and I would not say The Silenced is that bad. It is at the very least, more interesting. So, if it wasn't bad, why didn't The Silenced make the cut?

I found The Silenced to be rather intriguing at first. It seemed like there was going to be some dark ghost story, with a manipulative and evil government facility being mixed in. I was interested and invested for a while. Eventually, however, that interest started to wane... heavily.

Pros

• When the movie tries to be horror, it mostly succeeds

• The setting of a female boarding school in Korea during World War II sets up a lot of different stories to tell, considering the Japanese occupation of Korea at the time

• Well-shot with some beautiful scenery

• The girls are all pretty good actors, even though they're all playing archetypes

Cons

• Doesn't quite know what it wants to be; does too many things at once

• Plot ends up going down a rather cliché route with a somewhat unsatisfying climax

• Takes a long time to get going

• Lots of character drama fluff that isn't great

Plot & Thoughts

The main issue I have with The Silenced is that it tried to do so many different things that simply didn't do enough. I got the impression that the filmmakers had some significant influences on the material, due to various moments in the movie. A majority of the film is akin to something like a Guillermo Del Toro movie. The way it's shot and the use of color reminds me of Del Toro's The Orphanage, in particular.

The Silenced still never quite goes down the horror path enough to make it a horror film. The fact that it doesn't go enough down any of the other genre paths to be anything of value or interest is another reason.

A young girl, named Shizuko, arrives at a boarding school for girls somewhere near Seoul in Korea during the early 1940s. She's timid, quiet, and has tuberculosis. She doesn't quite go through the typical movie hazing of a new kid in a school, but the friendly archetype and the mean bully archetype are still established pretty quickly, nonetheless. At first, it seemed like the boarding school was for girls who had specific health issues; at least, that's how I interpreted it through some bits of dialogue.

At some point, though, the illness factor doesn't matter because it isn't brought up as much as the movie progresses. What is brought up over and over is that the girls are supposed to be improving themselves mentally and physically. At the end of the semester, a lucky pair are to be selected and sent to Tokyo. Why does this matter? What's so special about going to the capital of a country that is currently occupying your country? I have no idea. The movie never really explains why this is a reward, but the girls sure want to go.

You might be wondering where the horror comes in. At some point, one of the girls has a dramatic, emotional outburst for no particular reason and it has some horror elements to the scene. There's also talk about a girl who used to sleep in Shizuko's bed, who had the same name, and who "left" without notice one day. When another girl mysteriously disappears in the same fashion, the horror finally shows up.

The horror is fleeting, though. There are some creepy scenes with girls under beds and stairs. Once that's done, there's not much else horror-related for the rest of the film. There are some brief horror scenes scattered throughout the rest of the movie, like a dream sequence and a flashback sequence, but nothing of significance in that genre ever rears its head much for the remainder. Instead, it starts going down the science-fiction path with government secrets and human experimentation until it reaches a climax that was clearly influenced by Akira in some way.

When the film was done, I felt a bit cheated. The Silenced seemingly forced itself into a bunch of different genres and subject matters, yet none of those were fully flushed out. The most endearing part of the movie was the whole friendship between the two main protagonists, but even that was pretty formulaic.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

The Silenced isn't a bad movie. It's well-shot, has decent acting from young actors, and it has some good moments. However, it never quite achieves any of the goals it sets for itself. It never manages to be a horror story. It never manages to be very interesting sci-fi. It never manages to tell an endearing story of friendship that hasn't been told before a million times. As a result, The Silenced is a bland, middle-of-the-road mystery thriller with a plot that loses its interest by the end.

Do you agree or disagree? Tell me what you think in the comments!

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