It can be hard to show the horrors of a murder without showing the murders themselves. In Nicholas J. Moore’s Where Silence Lies, we get just that — a dialogue-driven crime thriller that has us guessing and leaves us aghast at the final few minutes.
After a brutal massacre leaves a powerful family dead, the sole survivor becomes the focus of a high-pressure interrogation where every answer only deepens the mystery.
Where Silence Lies, IMDB
A woman calls 911 and tells the dispatcher that her family had been brutally murdered. They pick her up and bring her to the police station for questioning. Though she seems to be a victim, there are too many inconsistencies — paired with her defensive and argumentative actions — that make the detectives think otherwise. With the Chief hounding them for an open-and-shut confession to close the case, the detectives try to work the woman for answers… some of which they were not prepared for. Where Silence Lies is a cat-and-mouse game told through back-and-forth dialogue that muddies the waters of truth and fiction.
Focusing on dialogue and interactions between a small few people and one basic setting may raise alarms for a film not being scary, but let me run this past you; Where Silence Lies isn’t about showing a gruesome death or sending someone to prison and throwing away the key, it’s about what runs through the mind of a madman. Where two detectives try to get the woman to confess, they are troubled by new information that keeps getting added to the situation. Lines get more and more blurry between what a criminal would do, and what an innocent person would do when put under this type of stress.
And the murder isn’t the only salacious moment here. Where Silence Lies does focus on the main crime of murdering a whole family, but the detectives are working out their own issues as well. Their partnership gets in the way of the questioning multiple times, hinting at more story here that slowly unfolds before our eyes. For the woman, her freedom is at stake. For her husband, his family fortune is at stake. For the Chief, his reputation to close cases is at stake. And finally, the two detectives risk their personal relationships at home, just to get a conviction. The drama of it all!
Where Silence Lies is a shocking thriller that tells us everything we previously thought is now wrong. We were looking at the wrong clues, we were becoming too invested, and we looked past obvious tells. If you’re looking for 80 minutes of blood and stabbings, this isn’t it. Where Silence Lies is psychological to its core and requires your brain to do some thinking… but as we know with horror movies, the mind can be an awfully scary place.
For more on Where Silence Lies, visit Moore Digital Studios on Instagram, web, and YouTube.
