"Silent Panic" (2020) Review
Under torchlight, two men carry the body of a discarded woman to what they believe to be an abandoned car. We see the lumbering gate of two perpetrators, carrying something heavy and we hear an exchange of German-speaking pass between them. The closing of the trunk containing the body triggers an incredibly slick opening credit sequence. Totems from this unfolding mystery are explosively rendered into a mutating series of evocative images reminiscent of David Fincher’s “The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo.” That’s the tantalising opening of writer/director Kyle Schadt’s “Silent Panic” a flawed, found body tale where the prospective impacts of reporting its discovery demolish friendships and the lives of those implicated.
Three old friends Eagle (Sean Nateghi), Bobby (Joseph Martinez) and Dominic (Jay Habre) are returning from a camping trip in a Californian National Park when they discover the body of a dead girl in the trunk of their car. Now, if they reflexively call the police, at that moment the movie passes the baton into a procedural mystery, but that’s not what “Silent Panic” is. Instead, this trio - dudes from Generation CSI - feel like they’ve immediately been implicated by its presence. In the resulting echo chamber of selfishness, we watch morality crippled by prospective inconvenience and perception of guilt.
“Silent Panic” is a curious title. At the beginning of the film, it’s a head-scratcher. The three central characters are anything but silent about the burden of this body. Sean Nateghi’s preening Eagle is a man out of prison, on the straight and narrow. He demands that Bobby and Dominic follow his lead and report the find after the fact. Nateghi is a screeching, preening, chest puffed, cocksure, 90s hair adorned, tool. The way he treats his partner Robin (Constance Brenneman), the woman who stood by him after he was wrongly convicted (which is the way he tells it), is nearly as callous as his actions in embroiling his friends into a murder. His actions and the performance of those actions don’t enamour the actor, nor give empathy to the character.
Joseph Martinez’s Bobby is a recovering addict, a now single father reliant on the support and kindness of his mother Lorraine (Helen Udy). While the line is never to work with animals or children, it’s Martinez that benefits greatly from playing a father. Scenes interacting with his son and taking him along to fulfil an attempt to dispose of the body are the most authentic and abrasive in the film.
Jay Habre’s Dominic, a reporter/writer, is perhaps the most infuriating character of the bunch. He has the emotional register of a 50s sci-fi cyborg, and his occasional narration is more jarring that Tobey Maguire lifeless contribution to the “Great Gatsby”.
The technical aspects of the film are where writer/director Kyle Schadt shows his promise. The use of digital high definition camera in the evening shots, refracting the emotional turmoil of the characters through the blue-red flicker of police lightning. Framing of intentional obstruction of justice through the fear and covert back-stabbing between the trio. The original electronic needles drop fluctuate from inspired to jarring. In moments you’re yearning from restraint the music is forceful. At other moments though, the music complements performances that are struggling to wordlessly convey turmoil.
Instead, the “Silent Panic” of the title is rendered in those in the supporting cohort of the film. The silent awareness of Constance Brenneman’s Robin that Eagle’s self-preservation is likely to drag her into a criminal investigation. Helen Udy’s Lorraine intuiting something deeply troubling her son Bobby and bringing his son (her grandson) to him to fulfil that connection to the world. Even Juliet Frew’s Sharon, Dominic’s love interest, feels like something is deeply wrong and passively gets out of the relationship. One can only the hope that the intent was to look at the calm, shrewd and empathetic supporting cast intended to underscore the vacuous, scattered and messy failings of L.A men of a certain age in the central performances.
