The Silence is a Netflix post-apocalyptic horror film directed by John R. Leonetti, adapted from Tim Lebbon's 2015 novel, and starring Stanley Tucci, Kiernan Shipka, and Miranda Otto. It follows a family attempting to survive the sudden emergence of "vesps" — winged creatures that hunt by sound — and the rapid collapse of civilisation that follows. If that premise sounds familiar, it should — this film arrived in the immediate wake of A Quiet Place and never escaped the shadow of that comparison.

At this point, the entire one-sense-will-kill-you subgenre is exhausted. A Quiet Place exhausted sound. Bird Box exhausted sight. The Happening famously and humiliatingly attempted smell. We have now spent the better part of a decade watching variations of the same story, and The Silence does very little to justify its place in that lineage. There is nothing here you have not seen done elsewhere, and most of it has been done better.

The film's best moments belong almost entirely to Stanley Tucci, whose performance carries far more weight than the script deserves. One sequence in particular — in which he physically defends his family against another desperate survivor — is the most engaged the film ever gets. Kiernan Shipka and Miranda Otto deliver perfectly serviceable performances around him, but the writing rarely gives them anything to work with.

The film does land on one observation that, while not original, remains true — no matter the nature of the apocalyptic event, other people will inevitably become the most dangerous threat. The introduction of a fertility-obsessed cult in the final third is the film's attempt to lean into this idea, but the execution is rushed and the stakes feel manufactured.

Then there's the timeline. The Silence collapses civilisation in approximately three days. Three. By that point, cults have organised, rumours of safe zones have spread, society has structurally broken down, and survivors are operating with the experience of weeks of trauma compressed into a long weekend. It strains credibility past the point of forgiveness and undermines whatever weight the film tries to build.

A handful of effective sequences, one Stanley Tucci-led action beat, and a fundamentally familiar premise that brings nothing new to a saturated subgenre.