In order to save her son’s life, Ana embarks on a quest to find a powerful stone from the Zone of Silence, located in Mexico. Someone finds out the power the stone possesses and believes it is a power worth killing for.

What if you had the power to go back in time to change a historical event or save a loved one? What if you could have clairvoyant powers and help the spirit of the dead cross to the other side?  Whatever the answer is, remember that with great power comes great responsibility.

Silencio (2018) tells us the story of how Dr. James White (John Noble) finds a cobalt stone in a desert of Mexico called The Zone of Silence, a place where communication comes to halt due to its magnetic attraction for meteors and space debris. Immediately, the stone is known to have some sort of magical power to turn back one week in time to the exact moment his family dies but this time he gets the chance to save one member, his granddaughter. Time goes by as it should and now Ana (Melina Matthews), a mother of a boy and also a doctor, takes care of her grandfather whom is being threatened by an unknown person to give up the stone in exchange for the safety of his family. Ana is unaware of the existence of the stone until a thug hired by the unknown threat shows up at her house to retrieve the stone. Since James can’t seem to find it, the thug takes Ana’s son as hostage until the stone is found.

The above summary is based on the first 40 minutes of the film. The runtime is 98 minutes. After the longest introduction ever in a drama film, you’ll get 20 continuous minutes of predictable twists that only tangles the plot to which you already know the conclusion. Later comes 2 minutes of a fight that turns into bloodshed, followed by a conclusion that lasts 10 minutes. And, everything is wrapped in 20 minutes of flashbacks and 6 minutes of credits. For such a strange formula and rushed script, it makes you wonder if the writer has had any influence from any season of American Horror Story.

The writer and director of the film, Lorena Villarreal, is no stranger to playing around with Mexican folklore. Before Silencio, in 2014 she experimented with the legend of the Weeping Woman in another film named Las Lloronas (The Weeping Women). Silencio has used most of the pointers and writing style that her other work has: a background story driven by the power of an urban legend. How is this good or original? It isn’t. Every aspect from the script has a very Mexican touch since it resembles the complications of a soap opera, better known in the Spanish market as a telenovela. Sadly, it doesn’t have the same passion.

At the beginning of the film, a title appears to claim the story if based on true events. Considering the development of the plot, it makes you wonder if the true events are based on the scientific proof approach it takes or if it’s more on a story told by a local person to entertain tourists.

Without the mythical background story of the Zone of Silence, the film would’ve ended as the story of a scientist discovering a stone that has the same mystical powers as Nicolas Flamel’s philosopher stone, and how it is desired by many to undo their marked faiths.

Even if Silencio dwells in sci-fi for a second, it doesn’t fit into the category as much as it falls into drama. It’s not heavy on the Mexican folklore, but it’s not very Hollywood. It should be said that the film has core given that it establishes a great plot to be followed, but it doesn’t have enough substance to feed on it.