Project Silence (2024)

Project Silence in this (obviously fictional!) thriller refers to a secret scheme that the South Korean government cooked up as a counter-terrorism measure. The idea was that they train dogs (and implant chips in them to control their behaviour) making them nasty, vicious creatures designed to take no prisoners. Sometimes the creatures don't work out as they should and have to be disposed of. This is where our story begins, one densely foggy morning on a road bridge outside Seoul.

Drivers of cars going too fast in the fog, some purposely, cause complete chaos as there's a pile-up of hundreds of cars crashing into each other, quite well created for the film, in the middle of which is the military truck taking the wonky dogs for putting down. But they're still alive. Obviously nobody thought to put them down before transporting the bodies instead! They break out of the truck they are in - of course they do - and begin to run amuck, attacking, maiming and killing everything in their paths!

There's a political backdrop to the story too as the government minister in charge of the project has elections looming and can't afford to let the cat (or in this case dog) out of the bag in case his party don't get re-elected - as they predict a public outcry regarding the very existence of Project Silence. One of the (uninformed) departmental bods happens to also be on the bridge with his daughter as they have family stuff going on - she wanting to go abroad to study, he can't afford to send her, nasty minister (his boss) offering to pay for it (pretty much) as long as he toes the line, doesn't spill the beans to the public and keeps all the people on the bridge quiet too.

If that's not complicated enough, we also have the technical research chappie who, of course, made the project with innocent intentions, but had it grasped from him by the military for what it ended up being. Well, he's also on the bridge in another vehicle. Oh yes, and there's an annoying chappie who worked in a filling station who is owed money by our under-minister, so he's in pursuit to get it back. So also on the bridge!

Eventually, the inevitable happens - the bridge starts to collapse after a series of chaotic attempts at escape and rescue with the loopy dogs centre-stage - and the minister with one eye on the elections ends up thinking that the best way out of this might well be to let (or help) the bridge (to) collapse, killing all the dogs and witnesses to the programme. He has already cut off cellular connectivity to stop the media getting hold of the truth!

So that's about it really. We then follow our bunch of a dozen 'survivors' for the rest of the film, narrow escape after narrow escape, ideas and plans to get off the bridge before it collapses whilst not getting marmalised by the dogs between them - the smartest one coming from the chappie's daughter. Lots of chaos and mayhem, some, but not too much gore and tearing apart of people in the dogs' way, all under the cover of dense fog, so quite dark mostly, ensuring that the CGI used for the dogs can be a tad more forgiving. It's not bad actually - I'd give the dogs a good 80% plus for looking realistically convincing.

The acting by the cast is decent enough, led by Lee Sun-kyun (Parasite) and Kim Su-an and it's been nicely-enough directed by Kim Tae-gon. It's not particularly tense or suspenseful, though it does have its moments. Mostly we're stuck right into this enjoying it for what it is - a far-fetched yarn, something of a disaster movie which will end in one of two ways. I'm sure you can guess which! Well worth a look if you can find it somewhere. Good fun thriller.