The Silencing Ending Explained

The action and thriller film of 2020 The Silencing incorporates a traditional plot, but its ending packs a few punches. The Silencing follows Rayburn Swanson, a reformed hunter with alcohol use disorder, whose daughter Gwen disappeared five years earlier. When a body washes up on a lakeshore, Rayburn meets with Sheriff Alice Gustafson to identify the body. After determining that the body is not Gwen's, the sheriff makes it his mission to identify the victim and killer. The only clue to the killer's identity is a spearhead with the initials “MB” engraved on it.

Back at the Rayburn animal sanctuary, the former hunter sees a man in a ghillie suit chasing a woman named Molly through the woods. Rayburn saves Molly from the killer by giving her shelter in an unused spike trap. When they return to the cabin, the killer attacks them again. Alice shows up and sees specific behavior that makes her believe the killer is her brother, Brooks. To protect her brother, she shoots Rayburn and calls for his arrest. When he escapes, a local doctor helps treat his injuries. The Silencing A decent action thriller plot leads to an intense finale filled with compelling action sequences and a huge plot twist.

Who is the silencing killer? Identity and motive explained

Doctor Boone is the violent culprit

Although Rayburn and Alice have suspects, the killer's identity remains a mystery at all times. The Silencing until the end. The killer is none other than Doctor Boone, a doctor who treated Rayburn's gunshot wound at the beginning of the film. This reveal feels rushed and confusing because Boone has minimal screen time before he is unmasked. The other suspects at least had established reasons at the beginning of the film as to why they might commit heinous murders. There is little to no foreshadowing or logic behind Doctor Boone's revelation in The Silencing.

Doctor Boone's motives in The Silencing makes even less sense than your identity. Years earlier, the doctor's daughter, Melissa, was killed in a drunk driving accident. It completely destroys your mental state. In the midst of your pain, he decides to start kidnapping and murdering teenagers to save them from parents who wouldn't miss them. Doctor Boone kidnapping teenagers as his daughter goes along with his train of thought. He doesn't want them to face the same negative consequences that his daughter faced. What doesn't make sense is why he would kill them. He is essentially committing the same act as the person who killed his daughter.

What happened to Rayburn's daughter?

Boone kidnapped the child

Rayburn is the central protagonist of The Silencingand the disappearance of his daughter is his motivator. When he sees Molly running away from Doctor Boone in a ghillie suit, he puts her safety at risk, apparently because she reminds him of his daughter. Rayburn doesn't discover what really happened to Gwen until he unmasks Doctor Boone. Boone reveals that he took Gwen because of Rayburn's alcohol use disorder.

When the doctor looks at Rayburn, he sees a failure and a waste of space, a common social perception of people with any type of substance use disorder. When Doctor Boone took Gwen in, he realized that the father was just like the person who killed his daughter because of Rayburn's mental illness. In his opinion, Rayburn didn't deserve to have Gwen. Boone also openly states that he believed Rayburn would raise Gwen to be as “useless” as her father.

Unfortunately, this mentality, defended by Doctor Boone, Rayburn's ex-wife, The Silencingis ending completely ignores the facts about alcohol use disorder. People with alcohol use disorder have an illness which affects your cognitive functions, such as reasoning and impulse control. Their illness is not a character defect. Ultimately the only thing that saves The Silencing Of completely demonizing people with this disease is the fact that the main person saying these things is a kidnapper and murderer.

Why does Rayburn stop hunting?

Memories of his daughter changed his worldview

Before the events of The SilencingRayburn stops hunting and opens an animal sanctuary. This seems like a drastic shift from one end of the spectrum to the other. Rayburn's only explanation comes when he talks to the children who visit his sanctuary. He tells them he stopped hunting because “My daughter didn’t like it.” However, in the middle and at the end The Silencing reveal details that provide a fuller picture of why he stopped.

Rayburn was telling the truth that his daughter didn't like, but he apparently didn't change his behavior until her disappearance. He may have made the decision to honor her memory, signaled by the fact that the shrine is named after her. However, he was also undoubtedly influenced by the guilt he felt over the disappearance of his daughter while he was buying alcohol.

The meaning of the barn in silencing

Alice's guilt is triggered by the building

When Alice takes Brooks to her apartment at the beginning of The Silencinghe begins to ask her to take a different path. She doesn't listen and he starts to panic when he sees a barn. Later, Alice claims that she should have adopted him after his parents died. The meaning of these scenes finally becomes clear in one small moment, a little more than halfway through the film. Alice goes to talk to Brooks and finds two newspaper clippings in his empty apartment. The headlines said, “Adoptive parents accused in horrific child abuse case” and “Teenager kept locked in barn.”

When combining this information with the previous scenes, it becomes clear that Alice feels guilty for leaving her brother in a situation where he was terribly abused. The barn remains a symbol of the passive trauma she has not reconciled with. It is also where Brooks commits acts of violence, symbolizing the cycle of abuse. This makes it one of the most important filming locations in the world. The Silencing.

The true meaning of the end of silencing

Themes of trauma and closure are the focus

At the end of The SilencingRayburn pushes Doctor Boone into an animal trap rather than let Alice catch the killer. Afterwards, he removes the missing plaques, goes to Gwen's funeral and gets rid of alcohol. Meanwhile, Alice watches as a bulldozer destroys the barn. These last scenes send the film's true, if misguided, message.

The Silencing tells viewers that closure allows people to heal from trauma. While this is a lovely sentiment at face value, it misunderstands the long-term impact of severe trauma. Healing from trauma requires much more work than is shown. Furthermore, recovery from alcohol use disorder requires more than just throwing away alcohol. Despite these discrepancies, The SilencingThe ending of offers hope in a world that is so often hopeless, making its message valuable.

How the end of the silencing was received

Critics were less than thrilled with the 2020 film from start to finish

Robin Pront's 2020 action thriller wasn't very well received by critics, however The Silencing the ending is not to blame. Instead, it's the pacing and overall tone of the film that seems to have led to the lukewarm response. The climax didn't break or detract from the overall story. Instead of, the problem is that the story itself (according to many critics) wasn't developed enough when the ending actually arrived. There were also some complaints that the plot of The Silencing it was very predictable.

For example, critic Glenn Kenny, writing for rogerebert. with dedicated most of his review The Silencing point out the lack of originality. Summarizing his own views and those echoed by several other critics, Kenny explains his problem with the 2020 thriller quite bluntly:

So predictable; add dialogue like, “Here, that badge means nothing, ma’am,” and you start to wonder if this movie is going to put ANYTHING new on the table. I mean, Pront films and stages all this with ease, and the Dane and the two English actors really try hard to play the gruff 'rural muricans, or maybe Canadians (things never come out that specific), but one does feel like I've already seen all this before.

Although Kenny doesn't specifically mention the final moments, the fact that he didn't point to it as a positive shows that The Silencing the ending is included in your review. He pointed out some positive points, like director Robin Pront's cinematography, so if the ending of The Silencing rescued a lackluster story, that would have been pointed out. Kenny's review isn't alone either, as many critics also shared the same sentiments.

A more balanced assessment that still presents problems with the pace at the end of The Silencing comes from reviewer The Iceman at joblo.com. While this review is more forgiving than Kenny's and many others, The Iceman still points out that the story didn't feel ready for a conclusion at the time of the end of The Silencing arrived:

What could have been stretched into a miniseries ends up being clumsily crammed into the standard feature film. Because of the accumulation of stories, we have people appearing out of nowhere (time is very fragile here), without calling for backup EVER, and superficial wounds that seem to heal overnight (we were left limping through two scenes that should have lasted months). I feel like this goes to the finish line and ends up confusing a great idea with clichés and generic character actions that would be better suited in a CBS drama.

Ultimately, the end of The Silencing wasn't strong enough to win over critics, as evidenced by the 20% Tomatometer score in Rotten tomatoes. It wasn't universally panned, but the 2020 thriller is far from an acclaimed title. However, it went down much better with audiences (as Popcornmeter's 90% audience rating also shows). It looks like Robert Ready The Silencing is another example of a film that highlights the different tastes of critics and the general public. While critics were turned off by the by-the-numbers narrative and cliché-filled film, many viewers found that the familiarity made the gritty thriller a thoroughly enjoyable watch.