Netflix’s ‘The Silence’ vs. ‘A Quiet Place’: How the Films Compare

Warning: Mild spoilers for The Silence ahead.

Let’s get this out of the way: No, The Silence on Netflix is not just another A Quiet Place. It’s much worse.

The Silence, a new horror film starring Kiernan Shipka and Stanley Tucci, is about a family under attack by bat-like monsters that find their prey via sound. The only way to survive is by being very, very quiet. This gives Shipka’s character, 16-year-old Ally Andrews, and her family, an advantage: Ally is deaf, and they all know sign language.

OK, yeah, so far this is sounding a lot like John Krasinski’s excellent 2018 horror film, A Quiet Place, as many YouTube commenters pointed out when the trailer for The Silence debuted. It’s also got a lot in common with another Netflix horror film, 2018’s Bird Box, which features monsters that kill by sight, meaning Sandra Bullock et al. must wear blindfolds. Then there’s also The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina factor, given that The Silence cast includes Miranda Otto, who plays Aunt Zelda to Shipka’s Sabrina in the Netflix series. All of this leads me to heavily suspect that someone at Netflix fed the terms A Quiet Place, Bird Box and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina into its all-powerful algorithm, and out popped The Silence.

Now, to be fair, The Silence—directed by John R. Leonetti and written by Carey and Shane Van Dyke—is based on Tim Lebbon’s 2015 novel of the same name, which debuted a good three years before either A Quiet Place or Bird Box. And there are some differences.

The Silence is much darker and gorier than A Quiet Place: In A Quiet Place, Emily Blunt has a creative solution for her crying newborn; while in The Silence, the crying newborn gets eaten. But the low budget of the film makes it hard to take it seriously. Am I supposed to laugh when Tucci, who plays Shipka’s on-screen dad, revs up a wood chipper and turns twenty or so of the CGI bat monsters into CGI bat-monster mulch? (Side note: The CGI bats look like Dobby with wings and fangs. Like, the terrible-looking Dobby from Chamber of Secrets, not the good-looking one in Deathly Hallows.) And, spoiler alert, if your question is: Does the dog in The Silence die? The answer is of course the dog in The Silence dies. That’s the kind of movie we’re watching here!

A Quiet Place starts out in a post-apocalyptic world, after the monsters have already invaded, while The Silence starts pre-invasion. Throughout the film, it’s unclear how much time has passed since the monsters arrived—one woman defending her property seems to have no idea that the world is under attack; a few scenes later, Shipka and Tucci visit a town that’s been completely boarded up and abandoned.

In A Quiet Place, Regan, played by Millicent Simmonds, lost her hearing at birth, and director Kransinski specifically sought out a deaf actress for the role. Meanwhile, Ally in The Silence lost her hearing at age 13, and Shipka, who is not deaf, learned sign language for the role. The fact that Ally only lost her hearing three years ago spares Shipka from attempting to sound like a deaf person, but director Leonetti still faced flack from the deaf community for saying the Shipka “seems to have an almost innate sense of what it’s like being a deaf person.” The Silence also manages to somehow work in a teen romance for Ally, which A Quiet Place thankfully avoided with Reagan. (Literally, who would have the time for that when you’re being attacked by bat monsters?!)

Then there’s the whole religious cult aspect of The Silence, which is more Bird Box than A Quiet Place. I won’t spoil anything, but I will say once the creepy priest shows up, I did finally put down my phone.

Tucci is a great actor, and does what he can as the dad desperately trying to keep his family together. But The Silence isn’t even fun as a B-horror film, mostly because we all just watched a very good version of this exact premise a year ago. And yes, ideas and storylines are reused all the time—but next time give me a few years to forget about them first!

Stream The Silence on Netflix