Summary
The Silence of the Marsh is shot well, and the cast seems to honour the work, but when you reach the ending, which clearly had a vision in mind, it’s easy to feel disappointed in the Netflix film
Netflix Spanish film The Silence of the Marsh follows a crime novelist — a writer with a loyal set of supporters; one of the opening scenes shows a fan at a book signing, curiously asking questions about his character and where his stories might go. The novelist is meant to be mysterious and off-beat and difficult to figure out. At least that’s how Marc Vigil directed it.
As the novelist delves deeper into his latest book, writing about a dark corruption scheme in the depths of Spain, fiction and reality appear to merge, as we are introduced to newer characters that lean into crime and link to political figures.
But this is my first point; whereby the novelist is meant to be mysterious and difficult to understand.
The Silence of the Marsh goes missing into the details of the corruption, placing itself too far away from the novelist. The Spanish film teases an ending with a revelation, but it barely focuses on the character driving the story. It loses itself as a crime film rather than a thriller.
Remember Netflix’s Marianne? That series focused on a horror novelist that also had fiction and reality merging. The reason why Marianne worked so effectively is because of its core focus on the author. It did not hide away and focus on mainly the horror aspect. You have no idea what the novelist’s motives are in The Silence of the Marsh. He’s just a man that is struggling to remove himself from his own texts — remove that aspect and you have a mediocre Spanish crime thriller centering on drug money and shirty politicians.
The Silence of the Marsh is shot well, and the cast seems to honor the work but when you reach the ending, which clearly had a vision in mind, it’s easy to feel disappointed in the Netflix film. It is heavily weighted in the wrong areas.
