The Netflix movie The Silence follows a family trying to survive an apocalyptic outbreak of monsters. Called "Vesps," these flying bat-creatures hunt by sound, so the only way to survive is to stay absolutely silent. This is easier for the Andrews family, who all learned sign language after Ally (Kiernan Shipka) lost her hearing in an accident, but not everyone survives to the movie's ending.
It's impossible to read the synopsis for The Silence without thinking of last year's runaway horror hit A Quiet Place, which also featured monsters that hunt by sound, a deaf daughter and a family that had an advantage of knowing sign language, and a house out in the countryside that they have to defend. However, The Silence actually predates A Quiet Place, being based on a 2015 novel by Tim Lebbon. The film was directed by John R. Leonetti and also stars Stanley Tucci, Miranda Otto, and John Corbett.
After realizing that the creatures on the news are attracted to sound, the Andrews family wisely decided to get out of the city and head somewhere a bit quieter. Following the devastating losses of Uncle Glenn (Corbett) and the family's pet dog on the road, they eventually find a house to hole up in (after the owner, unfortunately, becomes a snack for the local Vesps). Just when it seems like they're safe from the reptilian monster birds, however, a new danger arrives in the form of a cult called The Hushed, who cut their tongues out as a tribute to the new world order. The Hushed begin harassing Hugh's (Stanley Tucci) family, leading to something even more sinister. Let's break down The Silence's ending, and what it reveals about the movie's overall themes.
What Happens At The End Of The Silence
In Netflix's The Silence ending, Ally and Hugh attempt to find antibiotics to stave off an infection in Kelly's (Miranda Otto) leg. When they leave the pharmacy they encounter a cult leader of The Hushed and ignore his attempts to ingratiate them into the fold. The cult then follows them from the pharmacy to the remote safe house. Hugh tries his best to get the cultists to leave him and the rest of the Andrews family alone, only for The Reverend to explain that they want Ally because "the girl is fertile." Hugh threatens them with a rifle, and they seemingly disappear. That same night Hugh tells Kelly the family should head up north since the Vesps can't live in the cold.
The Netflix horror original turns into every parent's worst nightmare when the cult sends in a child armed with cellphones set to go off with alarms as soon as she enters the house. The noises attract the Vesps and the family retreats to the basement, only to find The Hushed waiting for them. Cultists attempt to drag Ally out of the house and Grandma Lynn fights them off. Lynn sacrifices herself by screaming and causing the Vesps to devour her and the cultists. The remaining members of the Andrews family are later shown up north alive and well with Ally's boyfriend Rob (Dempsey Bryk).
What Are The Creatures In The Silence? Monsters Explained
Like something from a Jurassic Park meets Alien crossover movie, the main antagonistic force in Netflix's The Silence are pterodactyl-type monsters called "Vesps." The opening sequence of The Silence shows that the Vesps escape from a sealed underground cave system and will devour anything that makes a sound. Ally does a bit of research on the monsters and finds that Vesps are an ancient species that evolved during their entrapment. Similar to real cave-dwellers like bats, the Vesps are completely blind and can only find their prey through sound. Another disturbing element to the monsters is their proclivity to lay eggs in the bodies of their victims. The Silence's ending posits the question of who will adapt first, the Vesps to the cold or the humans to the silence.
The Hushed Represent Adaptation and Evolution
They might just seem like a typical apocalyptic cult, but the Reverend and his followers, The Hushed, actually represent one of the major themes of not only The Silence but also the A Quiet Place franchise and Netflix's other release, Bird Box. All three movies introduce a new predator into the ecosystem and show how humanity adapts in order to survive. In Bird Box, for example, audiences saw Sandra Bullock's character raising her children to always use blindfolds outside, so as not to see the monsters who kill simply by being witnessed.
The Abbotts in A Quiet Place and the Andrews family in The Silence both adapt by communicating through sign language, but The Silence's cult of The Hushed have a different approach in mind. They cut out their tongues, knowing that their voices will only get them killed in this new world, and the Reverend unsettlingly reveals that they're interested in capturing Ally because she's "fertile" and therefore an interesting investment to the Waco-type cult. Now, while the odds are heavily in favor of the Reverend only wanting a "fertile" teenage girl because he's a creepy rapist, that wording is significant because it ties in with The Silence's ending themes of evolution. When a former apex predator is confronted by a new apex predator, one of the best chances at survival is to reproduce and replenish their numbers. Unfortunately, the Vesps have a bit of an unfair advantage in that regard.
The Silence's Ending Reveals How the Vesps Caused an Apocalypse
As with a lot of apocalypse movies, one of the first questions that people ask is how the might of the United States military was so helpless in the face of, in this case, a bunch of mini-pterodactyls straight from Jurassic Park. After escaping from a cave system where they have been evolving for thousands of years, the Vesps quickly cover the country in devastating numbers, slaughtering entire cities full of people all the way to The Silence's ending. It's the kind of feat that would require trillions of Vesps, which seems like more than could be feasibly contained in a single cave system.
Netflix's The Silence infestation is explained in more detail in the book, but the Vesp takeover was facilitated by the fact that they breed extraordinarily quickly - laying eggs in the bodies of their victims that hatch rapidly. Because of this, the Vesp plague spreads far more rapidly and lethally than an Army of The Dead inspired zombie plague; whereas a zombie can only create one new zombie at a time, a Vesp can lay a dozen eggs and then move on to lay a dozen more, so their numbers quickly and exponentially multiply. The Silence's ending reveals the Vesps' breeding strategy, showing a recently killed wolf where a Vesp has laid translucent eggs — the babies inside already well-formed.
The Silence's Ending Is All About Survival of the Fittest
The Silence, A Quiet Place, and Bird Box are interesting because they all reframe something that would have traditionally been thought of as a disability — blindness or deafness — as a key survival trait that gives people an evolutionary advantage. Ally is better suited to survive in the new world because she's used to communicating without sound, much like Regan from A Quiet Place. The Silence's ending shows her and Rob silently hunting the Vesps in the woods and offers hope for a future where humans can, if not wipe out the Vesps, then at least survive alongside them.
Also key to The Silence's ending is the Andrews family heading North to The Refuge, where the Vesps are less numerous because they are not well adapted to the cold. Evolution takes quite a long time, and in the interim humanity's best chance at survival is simply to relocate to areas where their new predators don't venture. If humanity in Netflix's The Silence can first adapt to the violent change in the ecosystem, then evolution will follow.