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Clarence Tsui

2/5 stars
Project Silence’s writer-director Kim Tae-gon is perhaps being ironic by calling his film’s monsters the “Echoes”.
Revolving around the stand-off between a pack of mutant dogs and a group of unarmed humans drawn from various levels of society, this extremely loud disaster movie repeats territory well-trodden in classics such as The Host, Train to Busan and Tidal Wave.
Unfortunately, Project Silence ends up a bad cover version of these originals.


Its suggestions of deep-state meddling in government affairs are never properly expanded, and it remains a mystery why the Korean government would want to develop top-secret killer canines.
But the film’s most devastating weakness is much less cerebral. Unfolding largely within a very short stretch of an obviously digitally created cable-stayed bridge, and reliant on slight set pieces involving dogs that look only mildly threatening, Project Silence betrays a limited scope for invention.

Kim made his name with more modest human dramas such as The Sunshine Boys and Familyhood, and he seems an odd fit for bombastic blockbusters that demand brawn as well as brain.
Project Silence begins at a high-level government meeting on how to resolve a protracted hostage crisis abroad.
While most officials argue for immediate action, lowly ministerial aide Jung-won (Lee Sun-kyun from Parasite) suggests the government should do nothing – a move his boss Hyun-baek (Kim Tae-woo), a front runner in the next presidential elections, would have a lot to gain from.

The suggestion, however practical, is abruptly dropped there and then, and the next scene shapes Jung-won up as a misunderstood widower father as he argues with his teenage daughter (Kim Su-an) as she readies to leave for studies abroad.
The clichéd domestic conflict is then again shunted aside as the pair get stuck in a messily choreographed multiple-vehicle pile-up, an incident that somehow lets loose a cage of genetically modified dogs that the authorities are trying to eliminate.
As the blood-baying animals run amok, Jung-won is left to fight for his life alongside the inventor of the mad-dog scheme (Kim Hee-won), a clownish tow-truck driver (Ju Ji-hoon from Along with the Gods), a young golfer (Park Ju-hyun) and her ditsy manager (Park Hee-von), and a kindly old man (Moon Sung-geun) and his Alzheimer’s-stricken wife (Ye Su-jeong).

These stock characters take their turns to usher half-baked twists, misplaced comedy and forced sentimentality as they engage in much unoriginal and unconvincing shouting, swinging of golf clubs, and selfless sacrifice.
But the most interesting conflict – between Jung-won and Hyun-baek, who is forced to literally throw his best-buddy underling to the dogs for his own political survival – remains only faintly sketched.
With that part very much muted, Project Silence becomes merely a tediously clanging catastrophe.
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Unarmed humans take on killer mutant dogs in writer-director Kim Tae-gon’s clanging catastrophe of a movie that shows limited invention
Half-baked twists, misplaced comedy and forced sentimentality run rife, while the film’s most interesting character conflict remains only faintly sketched


Premiering at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and starring Parasite’s Lee Sun-kyun and Along with the Gods’ Ju Ji-hoon, Project Silence is a clanging catastrophe that shows limited invention.


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Review

Review | Cannes 2023: Project Silence movie review – Lee Sun-kyun, Ju Ji-hoon fend off mutant dogs in Korean monster thriller that offers little original

Unarmed humans take on killer mutant dogs in writer-director Kim Tae-gon’s clanging catastrophe of a movie that shows limited invention Half-baked twists, misplaced comedy and forced sentimentality run rife, while the film’s most interesting character conflict remains only faintly sketched

Unarmed humans take on killer mutant dogs in writer-director Kim Tae-gon’s clanging catastrophe of a movie that shows limited invention

Half-baked twists, misplaced comedy and forced sentimentality run rife, while the film’s most interesting character conflict remains only faintly sketched