Project Silence

Tae-gon Kim, Yong-hwa Kim, and Joo-Suk Park all collaborated on the screenplay for Project Silence. Tae-gon Kim directs this sci-fi horror tale set in South Korea. Is there enough intrigue and chills to hold audiences’ attention?

Jung-won (Lee Sun-kyun) and his daughter, Kyeong-min (Kim Su An), have a strained relationship. After his wife died, Jung-won threw himself head-first into work, leaving Kyeong Min to largely fend for herself in grief. Their gulf is so enormous that she’s now heading to Australia to study music. At the gas station, oddball attendant Jobak (Ju Ji Hoon) warns the duo of the terrible crash on the bridge to the airport. Also at the airport are Mi ran (Park Hee-bon) and Yoo ra (Park Ju-hyun), who have just landed to enter a golf tournament, as well as a handful of other characters who are quickly introduced, including a woman suffering from dementia and her patient husband.

It isn’t long before everyone finds themselves trapped on the heavy fog-shrouded highway, not moving due to the aforementioned several-car pile-up. Unfortunately, one of the cars involved in the wreck was a military vehicle transporting dogs who are experimented on and trained to be the most aggressive killers possible. Of course, the canines get loose and start getting revenge on humankind. With everyone trapped on the bridge, is there any chance to escape the rampaging hounds?

“…the canines get loose and start getting revenge on humankind.”

Between Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum, Thirst, The Host, and Two Sisters, South Korea has proven more than capable of delivering scares with intelligence. But as with any filmmaking industry, bad titles exist as well. Project Silence falls somewhere in the middle. The CGI rendering of the dogs is so-so. The characters are not the most realistic or dynamic. Any sense of horror comes in the tragic backstory of the canines and the military experiments they endure. The intercutting of the government’s response to the incident makes sense, but it becomes more convoluted than necessary.

However, the cast is quite good. Kim Hie Woon as Dr. Yang, whose research was corrupted to create the assassin puppies, is very good. Sun-kyun is likable and shares believable chemistry with Su An. Hoon really sells the arc and desperation of the seemingly selfish attendant.

Perhaps more importantly, the action scenes are dynamite. Mi ran and Yoo ra beating a vicious dog with a golf club while weaving through the crumpled cars is fun. An attack while the characters are trying to fix a bus is thrilling. The camera work is kinetic, with lots of pans and tracking shots to follow the canine rampage easily.

Project Silence is home to stellar action and a few creepy moments. But the characters are thin, and the side story gets too messy for its own good. However, the cast is good enough and those action beats really are something special.