SILENT RIVER (2021) Review

SILENT RIVER (2021) Review

In SILENT RIVER, Elliot (Liang) is desperate to reconcile with his estranged wife, Julie (Tsang). At a loss for his next move, he falls into a downward spiral and, when he encounters the sultry Greta (Tsang in a dual role)—an uncanny woman on the run from a mysterious past—strange and mysterious occurrences begin to haunt him.

With a surreal filmmaking style inspired by the neo-noir work of David Lynch, SILENT RIVER—starring West Liang (FBI: Most Wanted, Atypical, Rebel) and Amy Tsang (Love Shot, Kung Fu)—is the third feature film release from writer/director Chris Chan Lee, who made his directorial debut in 1997 with the award-winning, critically acclaimed film, Yellow, a coming-of-age drama/comedy about a group of Asian-American teens in Los Angeles.

Yellow featured the theatrical film acting debuts of John Cho (the Star Trek and Harold & Kumar film franchises) and Jason Tobin (Warrior, Jasmine, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift). Lee followed with producing the thriller, Jasmine, which won 100 awards in international film festival competitions.

SILENT RIVER starts off well, it’s leisurely paced and offers no easy clues as to where this might be going. It’s very well filmed and scored but at close to two hours running time, there’s only so much plot teasing that one can cope with, with such a deliberately ambiguous plot, before weariness sets in. Sure it’s weird and it’s never dull, but it’s also never completely satisfying either. I get that Chris Chan Lee was inspired by David Lynch but when it comes to it, only Lynch can really do Lynch.

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