A Wonderfully Fresh Gimmick, Weighted Down by Stereotypical Plot Hangups

Rating: 5/10 (24 September 2018)

You're silent or you're dead in this unique twist on the post-apocalypse. Stalked by blind, stick-like predators with unnaturally precise hearing, a small family struggles to carry on and make a life for themselves in an abandoned farm house.
Seems like it's tough to find genuinely new, original concepts in genre film these days, but this certainly fits the bill. We've grown so accustomed to big bangs and fiery finales on the silver screen, ninety minutes of quiet stillness feels like a completely foreign experience. That near-total silence is efficiently played for dramatic tension, poked and prodded in inventive ways that demonstrate the lengths this family has gone to maintain normalcy (exterior doors left permanently open, sand-lined paths through the most commonly used walkways) and, occasionally, broken in a few moments of pure, unguarded terror.
As gimmicks go, it's a particularly effective one, though the plot is often forced into contrived scenarios to connect its various ideas and to artificially generate extra layers of suspense. It's one of those movies where you'll facepalm over boneheaded decisions and wonder aloud how these people have survived for so long. In other words, it manages to both buck horror stereotypes and embrace them. The potential was there to be much better.