Silencio is a 2018 thriller about a woman who embarks on a quest to find a powerful stone from the Zone of Silence that she believes is a power worth killing for.
Our little blue planet is home to a bevy of mysterious geographical wonders, with a few holding distinction as being somehow ‘magical’ in property for their ability to do things that seem to have no explanation. You’re already thinking of the Bermuda Triangle and indeed, that is the most popular of such places, yet there is another less common spot on the Earth that is awash in its own circle of wonder, that of the Zone of Silence, or Mapimí Silent Zone in the north of Mexico where urban legends have long maintained that no radio signal or other type of communication can exist, further bolstered by an actual recovery operation by the United States Air Force that created even wider spread folklore.
Now it’s the subject of a new thriller from writer/director Lorena Villarreal, boldly claiming it’s based on a true events. It starts in the 1970s, where the Air Force send in a clean-up crew to the eerie location to salvage a rocket that went astray. On the site are scientists James (John Noble) and his young apprentice Peter (Nic Jackman), who come upon a small black rock they believe to be a shard of a famed meteor that has shaped the landscape and its unique aura. When circumstances have them touching the rock, they are suddenly thrust back in time a few days earlier to the site of an accident that takes the lives of his James’ daughter, her husband, and his other grandchild, but not before he is able to save the youngest, Anna. Now in the present, therapist Anna (Melina Matthews), a mother, isn’t aware of the odd twist in time that saved her, dealing with her now dementia-riddled grandfather and a patient named Matthew (Michel Chauvet) who says her dead sister Lisa wants James to snap out of it and find the stone he buried long ago.
Taking the events of things that supposedly occurred in places such as the Bermuda Triangle as being somehow mystical in nature is of course, a tempting. Science has long given reason for what appears to be isolated phenomenon yet movies and books continue to spin entertainment out of them. With Silencio, the story attempts to give some legitimacy to the ‘powers’ of the Zone of Silence, having Peter, now older and played by Rupert Graves, obsessed with the desert’s source for mystery, touring with his research and findings, crediting James for his groundbreaking work decades prior.
Meanwhile, Anna, told by Matthew how to awaken James – saying the word ‘3’ three times – does so, and at precisely 3:33 am, he jerks up from bed and goes on a hunt in the backyard. All of this makes for a good story, the threads ready to come together as we shift from present day to flashbacks of grandpa and young Anna (Shayne Coleman) bonding. These would probably make for at least a plausible bit of fun, but Villarreal isn’t finished yet, adding another layer where Ana’s asthmatic son Felix (Ian Garcia Monterrubio) is targeted by nefarious forces looking for the stone.
This is a fanciful tale that might have had more impact but the film is simply too ripe to make much of it sustainable, with overly-dramatic moments (and weepy music) that don’t quite resonant, giving it TV movie quality. However, the cast is game with good turns from Noble, Graves and Matthews, all giving the movie some heart. The multilanguage effort is at least a promising return for Villarreal, who does offer up some compelling imagery, and hopefully marks the start of a more.