The Silencing (2020) is deceptively named, as it is a heart-racing ride through the forest that has a twisty-turny narrative and emotive performances. This crime thriller has heart, centered around a deeply depressed father who is in search of his missing daughter and a detective who is plagued with guilt from the sorry state of her younger brother’s life. Starring Nicolaj Coster-Waldau of Game of Thrones fame in a surprisingly engaging role where he wields a shotgun instead of a sword, The Silencing is an excellently crafted murder mystery.

Somewhere in the foggy mountains of Minnesota lives a grieving father, Rayburn Swanson (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), who is in search of his teenage daughter who has been missing for five years. Between drinking all day, he protects his land from trespassers, land that he had converted to a sanctuary in the name of his daughter. The controversial new sheriff in town, Alice (Annabelle Wallis), spends her time covering for her troublesome brother, as well as looking into unsolved local cases, including the cold case of Rayburn’s missing daughter. When her brother’s latest mix-up seems to overlap with the build-up of missing girls cases, Alice and Rayburn’s quests collide.

The Silencing is a solid movie on all points — acting, cinematography, direction, editing, you really can’t complain about anything except for its all too familiar murder-solving premise, which felt eerily similar to Wind River (2017), another crime thriller set near northern U.S. indigenous, tribal land, and even more suspiciously, has a character named Rayburn. In any case, on its own, The Silencing is a good movie, and its only fault is that it is forgettable compared to other serial killer crime thrillers like Wind River and the bunch that came out of 90s cinema.

The killer is well hidden in this film, and I can honestly say that I did not see it coming at all, a testament to Micah Ranum’s smart scriptwriting and director Robin Pront’s great ability at showing without telling. The killer’s home was even designed well, full of animal heads that reminded me of other backwoods killer’s abodes from cinema history, and this serial killer was made more creature-like than human by donning a Ghillie suit, which is usually worn by snipers. Screenwriter Ranum does a great job at writing clues into the dialogue which come to fruition later in the film, the only part of the dialogue that dipped for me was unfortunately from the killer, who’s motivation to kill seemed a little contrived.

Overall I was impressed with The Silencing, which satisfied the cold-case, true crime lover in me. While I do not think that The Silencing does anything particularly special or new with the crime thriller genre, it does successfully unfold without feeling cliche or repetitive, and its plot twist for the revelation of its killer at least makes The Silencing interesting. It’s no Hitchcock movie and it easily could have starred Gerard Butler who seems to be Hollywood’s current so-so action movie go-to guy, as The Silencing is decidedly cookie cutter, but it is a very good cookie of a movie. Acquired by Saban Films, The Silencing is being released to video on demand and DVD on August 14th.

MOVIE RATING — 8 out of 10