There’s slow-burn horror, and then there’s Silence & Darkness, which is less “slow burn” and more “damp match that occasionally hisses menacingly.”
On paper, this movie sounds like the kind of indie thriller that could really mess you up: two disabled sisters, isolated in the countryside with their unnervingly clinical father, gradually realizing they’re the unwilling stars of his little home-brewed ethics-violation project. In the right hands, that’s tense, disturbing, and emotionally devastating.
In this case, it’s… mostly awkward staring, long silences, and a guy with a tape recorder whose villainy is telegraphed so hard you expect him to start twirling an invisible mustache.
The Concept: Excellent. The Execution: Needs Life Support.
Anna is blind. Beth is deaf. Together they form one fully functional person and one very on-the-nose metaphor. They live with their father, referred to mostly as Father/Doctor, which is never a good sign in a horror script unless Jesus is involved—and even then, questionable.
Their daily routine looks like this:
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Father drugs them at night
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Father bathes them in the morning
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Father feeds them breakfast
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Father narrates creepy audio journals about them like they’re lab rats with tuition bills
Anna and Beth, meanwhile, just vibe. They hang out at home. They support each other. They appear to love each other deeply. And they also, apparently, have never once in their lives thought, “Huh, this is weird.”
It’s a big ask: that two intelligent young women would be this completely unquestioning of their father, who gives off more red flags than a parade in Beijing. The movie leans on “isolated upbringing” and “dependency” to justify their passivity, but it barely does the work of selling that psychologically. We’re just supposed to roll with, “Yes, this is fine, my father drugs me daily and washes me like a toddler, love that for us.”
Father: Evil By Audiobook
The dad (Jordan Lage) is a physician, a widower, a germaphobe, and a walking, talking ethics violation. To the outside world, he’s just a slightly odd small-town doctor. Inside the house, he’s keeping a narrated journal as if he’s pitching a podcast called “This American Life I’ve Destroyed.”
Those journals include:
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Clinical descriptions of his daughters as experimental subjects
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Commentary on their dependence on each other
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Detailed narration of Beth’s completely unnecessary amputation
You’d think with this level of documented self-incrimination, the movie would drive towards some epic confrontation. A showdown. A reckoning. At the very least, a monologue with some style.
Instead, Father just sort of drifts around being ominous and bland. He’s not intriguing enough to be a Hannibal Lecter type, nor pathetic enough to be interesting in a sad way. He’s just… awful and kind of boring. Which, frankly, is rude. If someone is going to mutilate their children and treat them as experiments, the least they could do is have interesting dialogue.
Mrs. Bishop and the Bone That Goes Nowhere
Our catalyst for suspicion is Mrs. Bishop, the neighbor who finds a human bone in the woods like it’s an invitation to finally move the plot forward. Anna senses something is off and starts asking about their mother’s death.
This could be the point where paranoia ramps up and the tension really kicks in—except we keep running into scenes where:
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The investigation goes nowhere
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Mrs. Bishop is thwarted by mild inconvenience
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The bone is more of a prop than a plot device
The whole bone subplot is like the movie’s attempt at being a mystery, but it never pays off in any surprising way. It’s just there to confirm what we already know: Father is shady as hell.
Talent Show, Now With Extra Amputation
In a rare moment of levity, Anna decides to teach Beth guitar so they can perform at a local talent show. It’s cute, it’s gentle, it hints at lives they might have had without Daddy Dearest and his god complex.
Naturally, Father hates it.
Nothing says “supportive parent” like drugging your daughter until she’s sick, taking her to the hospital, and returning with her missing an arm and an entirely new personality. Beth comes back:
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One limb down
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Emotionally shattered
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Understandably furious
The movie treats this like the big turning point—and it is—but it still somehow manages to underplay it. We don’t see much of Beth’s emotional process. She just becomes withdrawn and angry (and honestly, same), but the film doesn’t give her the space or dialogue to really unleash the horror of what’s been done to her.
It’s all very quiet, very muted, and very frustrating. A girl has had her arm amputated for no reason, and the script treats it with the same emotional urgency as someone getting a really bad haircut.
The Sisters Finally Wake Up (and Snap)
The one good thing about Beth’s trauma is that it finally snaps the spell for Anna. Father asks her to secretly slip medication into Beth’s food. Instead, Anna takes the pills to a stream and tosses them away in what is, for this movie, a shocking act of rebellion.
Finally, the movie seems ready to do something. Tension builds. The sisters wordlessly conspire. And when they kill their father, it’s—
…over in a blink.
We don’t see some elaborate scheme. We don’t get a cathartic moment of the girls confronting him with what he’s done. It’s just: they kill him, huddle together on the floor, end scene. It feels less like revenge and more like the film is hustling to make its runtime.
For a story that spends so long slow-walking us through grooming, control, and medical abuse, that climax lands like someone closing a book mid-sentence and saying, “You get it.”
Mrs. Long: The Podcast From Hell
While the sisters are busy solving their problems with homicide, we cut back to Mrs. Long, Father’s married lover.
She sneaks into his office, finds his tapes, and finally peels back the curtain the rest of the way. Through Father’s audio journals, she (and the sheriff she drags along) learns:
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He deliberately caused Anna’s blindness
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He deliberately caused Beth’s deafness
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He amputated Beth’s arm for funsies and science
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He resented their closeness and wanted them dependent on him
It’s horrible. It’s monstrous. It’s also all stuff we’ve basically pieced together already.
Instead of new revelations, the tapes mostly exist to summarize the movie for characters who weren’t there. By the time Mrs. Long and the sheriff drive out to the house, clutching the tapes like they’re carrying the plot’s final exam, the sisters have already handled business and fled.
So they pull up to a crime scene they don’t know is a crime scene yet, and… the movie just ends with the girls escaping. No confrontation. No showdown. Just: “Oops, you missed them.”
It’s like the script saw the opportunity for a third act and quietly chose not to take it.
Style Over Substance, and Then Not Enough of Either
To its credit, Silence & Darkness tries for an arthouse vibe:
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Minimal dialogue
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Long, quiet scenes
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Sparse score
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Lots of visual focus on routine and body language
The problem is, if you’re going to lean this hard into minimalist storytelling, your visuals and performances need to carry a lot. Sometimes they do—there are chilling moments of domestic ritual that genuinely feel suffocating. But too often, the film mistakes slowness for depth.
There’s a difference between “tension you can cut with a knife” and “nothing is happening but the camera refuses to leave.” This film teeters into the latter a bit too often.
The themes—control, abuse, disability, dependence—are heavy, but the movie feels reluctant to dig into them with any real teeth. It doesn’t want to be exploitative, which is good, but it also doesn’t quite dare to be fully confrontational, which is… less good.
Final Diagnosis: Intriguing Idea, Flatline Execution
Silence & Darkness had everything it needed to be a brutal, unforgettable little thriller:
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Creepy doctor dad
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Isolated, sheltered sisters
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Horrific medical abuse
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A slow-burn realization and revolt
Instead, it delivers:
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A villain who’s equal parts evil and beige
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A third act that feels like someone hit fast-forward
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Big reveals that land like things we already suspected
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A lot of atmosphere and not nearly enough payoff
If you like moody, minimalist indie horror where very little happens for long stretches and the good stuff is mostly implied, you might find this interesting. If you’re looking for a satisfying, emotionally resonant takedown of a monstrous patriarch and the system that lets him thrive?
This is less Silence & Darkness and more Muted Discomfort & Plot Holes.
At least the sisters got away, though. Frankly, I’m rooting for them—and for a more competent movie to pick up their story in the sequel that will absolutely never be made.
