SILENT ISLAND: STRANGE BEASTS (China 2024) - MINI REVIEW
Yes, this is a Chinese version of A Quiet Place!
It’s been four months since the monsters have taken over the quiet, holiday island. A family of survivors live their days in absolute silence, being careful not to alert the vicious monsters that hunt and kill on sound.
With wife Yi Lin pregnant and about to give birth, husband Boming, his niece Yina and a couple of other survivors do their best to fortify the remaining villa on the island, but a series of mistakes puts them all in very grave danger.
I liked the first A Quiet Place film, I wasn’t so keen on the second one but then went back to enjoying the series again for the third film. While technically they are sci-fi movies, they have elements of horror in them, and would you believe it’s one of the very rare horror series that is permitted for release in Chinese cinema. My guess is because it’s about aliens and not ghosts.
It makes sense that the Chinese would attempt to make their own version of the film, but if you’re looking for the quality of storytelling and worldbuilding of the original, you’re going to be very disappointed.
The first problem occurs with the lack of actual storyline. The movie only very briefly provides some backstory about how it all happened, and it’s done by a few of the only lines of dialogue in the film. To get the full backstory of the film, I had to look at its listing online, and even then, it raised more questions than it answered.
The survivors utilise an abandoned water amusement park, specifically the waterfall when they need make sound. This is where Yi Lin gives birth. You’ll recognise this element from A Quiet Place as well. The confusing element here is that the waterfall relies on electricity to operate, but generating electricity makes a lot of noise. So how is it that there is still electricity available to power everything?
The biggest mistake a filmmaker makes when they base a film on a particular set of rules is that the audience gets frustrated when the movie doesn’t follow them. Why do they need to whisper, but make so much noise when walking on gravel roads?
Are they actually using recognised sign language in the film, or are they just waving their arms and hands around at each other and hoping they can understand? We get the luxury of subtitles - even in places where nothing happens but the filmmaker feels the need to let the audience know - but the characters don’t.
The creature effects are… interesting to say the least. They’re not aliens like the series this movie is based on, but instead just generic creatures with what appears to have an abundance of ears on their head. Or something like that. These are clearly very cheaply made monster creations that barely suit the scenes they are placed in.
And just like in A Quiet Place, they are defeated, or at least weakened, in the same way.
It’s hard to stop comparing this movie to A Quiet Place. And gets even harder to do that when this movie copies one of the most recognisable scenes from that film - where a characters steps on an exposed nail on a staircase. I hate this scene for many reasons, mostly for the fact that it makes no sense there would be a nail of that length on a staircase that no one has ever noticed before.
And then the movie just ends. It’s a ridiculously short 62 minutes when it needed to be 85. It needed to tell me the actual backstory and not make me guess nor look it up online. It needed to explain to me who everyone was and how they were connected. And more importantly, it needed an ending that I could remember, because as I type this, mere hours after watching the film, I can’t remember at all how it ended.
This gets 2 ghosts out of 5 for the brazen attempt at replicating such a well-known sci-fi horror franchise with 1/50th of the budget.
Genre Sci-Fi Horror
Director Wang Shuai
Starring Zhang Haocheng, Dong Luman
Original Title 寂静岛之异兽
Alternative Title The Strange Beast of Silent Island, The Beast on Silent Island
Country of Origin China
Release Date 27 December 2024 (web streaming only)