Colby (Jeremiah Sayys) is an ailing former scuba diver who returns home after his wife's brutal murder. Despite the best efforts of friends and family to raise his spirits, Colby descends deeper and deeper into a maddening darkness that threatens to envelope his very existence.

One of the better indie horror/thriller features I've caught thus far in 2012, Of Silence is a film that practically begs to be fully experienced on a big screen or HD experience. The film is a full-on sensory experience, largely owing to the terrific camera work of D.P. Erick M. Crespo and stand-out original music by Frederik Wiedmann.

It's always an accomplishment when someone can pull off writing, directing and acting in a film. It's even more of an accomplishment when it succeeds in a low-budget indie, where the choice may often be governed by financial concerns but still tends to work to the detriment of a film.

Not in this case.

It's clear from the first minute in Of Silence that this film is the artistic vision of Jeremiah Sayys, and to his credit he manages to surround himself with quite the team to pull it all off.

Avoiding excessive amounts of gore in favor of mood and atmosphere, Sayys accomplish quite a bit with, you guessed it, actual silence. While I wouldn't go quite so far as to call Of Silence a meditative film, I would lean towards it being a film that manages to horrify in a rather contemplative way. This has much to do with the quiet, simmering performance served up by Sayys himself. As the film's central figure, Sayys elicits both sympathy and anxiety. It's a statement to his acting ability that he has you drawn in far enough that by the time he starts to descend, you're absolutely hooked and willing to go just about anywhere with him.

Strong supporting performances are turned in across the board, most notably with Ashlie Gillespie, Suzanne Ford and Najarra Townsend.

Filmed on a budget just north of six figures, Of Silence manages to transcend its financial limits on the strength of a stellar production crew. In addition to the aforementioned excellent camera work and music, the production design of Reed Johns excels at creating an atmosphere simultaneously normal and jarring and that is complemented greatly by the art direction of Joseph Schell, costuming of Tasha De La Fuente and the precision editing by Eamonn Glennon and Austin Harvey Stock.

For more information on Of Silence, be sure to visit the film's Facebook page listed in the credits and check out its trailer above this review.

© Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic