The Silence of the Marsh – Netflix Review (3/5)

THE SILENCE OF THE MARSH is a new thriller on Netflix. It’s from Spain (org. title El silencio del pantano) and features a crime writer who works with reality in some brutal ways for his own fiction. Check it out on Netflix and read our full The Silence of the Marsh review here!

The Silence of the Marsh is a Netflix thriller from Spain (org. title El silencio del pantano). We love Spanish movies in general – and especially genre productions – so we were really looking forward to this one.

Also, the plot is about a crime-writer who is confronted with how his own fiction isn’t actually as crime-riddled as real life. When life imitates art, we’re always loving that meta aspect. With this new thriller on Netflix, you’ll be challenged in many ways since the storytelling is quite tricky. However, the crisp runtime of just around 90 minutes is a bonus.

Continue reading our The Silence of the Marsh movie review below.

The many familiar faces

The lead actor in The Silence of the Marsh is played by Pedro Alonso. He plays the writer known simply as Q. You might know Pedro Alonso from the Netflix series The Ministry of Time or Money Heist. During most of this movie, we see things from his point of view. But not always… more on this later.

Other key characters are portrayed by actors such as Javier Godino and José Ángel Egido.

You may recognize José Ángel Egido from the Netflix crime anthology Criminal. He was (of course!) in the segment titled Criminal: Spain. You can read our review of the series segment right here >

Also, Javier Godino was in the brilliant The Secret in Their Eyes which won an Academy Award for best foreign film. It was also later remade in the US. Javier Godino doesn’t have a big role in The Silence of the Marsh but I immediately got chills when I saw him. That’s the burden of playing a creep very well in a movie, I suppose.

Netflix thriller The Silence of the Marsh ending

The Silence of the Marsh ending will probably leave you with some questions, but I’ll try not to do spoilers here and just prepare you a bit instead. In order to fully understand the ending of The Silence of the Marsh on Netflix, you just need to be aware of a few things.

You might also like to read: The Silence of the Marsh ending explained >

Most importantly, you need to know that a few different stories are actually being told. First, there’s the one being written by the crime-writer. Then there’s the real-life experience of said crime-writer. Finally, there’s the actual real world of things that are going on separately from the writer.

It reminded me a bit of the Spanish movie El autor (The Motive is the English title) which starred Javier Gutiérrez from The Occupant. The plots of these two movies are not at all the same, but the element of having a writer interacting with reality is. Of the two, I prefer the overall story of El autor.

Basically, in this new thriller, you have three different stories going on and you need to stay alert to understand the ending. Hopefully, if you keep this in mind, the ending of The Silence of the Marsh will be explained to you as it happens.

In many ways, this Spanish thriller on Netflix offers a lot of pieces to a puzzle. However, you’ll be putting together the corners of this puzzle, which appear to be rather different from one another. Once all the pieces have come into place, the full image of the puzzle should appear.

Watch The Silence of the Marsh on Netflix now!

The Silence of the Marsh was directed by Marc Vigil, who also directed 10 episodes of the Netflix fantasy series The Ministry of Time (org. title El ministerio del tiempo). In fact, Marc Vigil has worked on quite a lot of TV series as well as directed a few short films. The Silence of the Marsh is actually his first feature film which is very promising.

The screenplay writers are Carlos de Pando and Sara Antuña. Carlos de Pando previously wrote on various TV series including The Ministry of Time while Sara Antuña wrote on the Netflix series Victim Number 8. Actually, she’s one of the creators of that particular series.

You might like: Our review of the Netflix series Victim Number 8 here >

The screenplay is adapted from the novel by Juanjo Braulio. I was not familiar with the novel, so I can’t speak to how good of an adaption it is. Only how good the story of the movie is and it is good but also very fragmented. Maybe the sharp runtime of 90 minutes is actually too short. It certainly wouldn’t have hurt to have spent more time on various elements along the way.

The Silence of the Marsh is out on Netflix from April 22, 2020.

Details

Director: Marc Vigil
Writers: Carlos de Pando, Sara Antuña, Juanjo Braulio (novel)
Stars: Pedro Alonso, Nacho Fresneda, Carmina Barrios, José Ángel Egido, Àlex Monner