At The Movies: K-thriller Project Silence unleashes killer canines, but struggles with cliches

Project Silence (PG13)

101 minutes, opens on July 11
3 stars

The story: High-ranking government official Cha (Lee Sun-kyun) and his daughter (Kim Su-an) are in a car travelling on the Airport Bridge when an accident occurs, causing a pile-up that blocks traffic in both directions. In that chain collision is a military truck from Project Silence, a top-secret operation seeking to create a breed of killer dogs. On the fog-bound bridge, the survivors become isolated. Father and daughter, along with others such as scientist Yang (Kim Hee-won), form a plucky band that fights to survive.

Comparisons between Project Silence and the hit South Korean zombie thriller Train To Busan (2016) will be inevitable. Like the earlier film, this is a survival story with a father-daughter relationship at its centre; survivors are trapped in a confined space, attacked by monstrous creatures. In the background, powerful men put themselves and their jobs ahead of saving lives.

It cannot be a coincidence that the makers of Project Silence cast Kim Su-an, who played Gong Yoo’s child in Train To Busan, as the daughter here.

There are a couple of differences, however. Train To Busan operated on the horror of the uncanny valley – reanimated corpses that look human but which have lost all humanity.

Project Silence’s snarling killers might look mean, but horrifying they are not. Director and co-writer Kim Tae-gon plays on the idea of the canines looking happy one second and turning vicious the next, but the transitions are mild at best and somewhat comical at worst.

There is also the storytelling problem of killing dogs, even murderous ones.

Moviegoers are fine with sharks, snakes and dinosaurs meeting a grisly end, but dogs belong to a special category of animals that must not be harmed, lest audiences revolt. It is perhaps why, in fight scenes showing survivors fending off the attacks, the camera opts to look elsewhere when the attackers get their comeuppance. Note the film’s mild PG13 rating.

The dogs, for the most part, are created digitally. The computer graphics are top-notch and there are only a couple of scenes in which rubbery-looking ones ruin the immersion.

Doing more harm to the pacing and immersion, however, are the characters of Yang and tow-truck operator Park (Ju Ji-hoon).

Both operate as comic foils to Lee’s starchy official, with one acting as the nervous nerd and the other the mouthy blue-collar guy. Their broad portrayals feel like lazy add-ons, not helped by the inclusion of another tacked-on stereotype – the devoted older couple, played by veterans Moon Sung-keun and Ye Soo-jung.

This movie is one of two features starring Lee to be released posthumously. The South Korean actor died in 2023, aged 48, from suicide following a police investigation into alleged drug use.

While not one of his best films – his part in the Oscar-winning satire Parasite (2019) takes that honour – this is still a solid, if a little silly, work of entertainment improved by his nuanced performance.

Hot take: A great concept for a thriller benefits from strong special effects, but suffers from the use of paper-thin stereotypes and a plot that strains credibility, even by the generous standards of disaster movies.