The Silent Valley

Could have been one of the best romanian mini series if it had a better acting

The subject is interesting, with potential. The way actors play.... not natural at all. Horia, Elena, Robert are the "champions" in this regard - I do not know which one is more awful. Horia at least has the excuse that is still young. Considering how dark and depressing Romanian movies are in general this one is quite an improvement, it is refreshing the fact that it is based somewhere else than the capital-Bucuresti. First 3 episodes are decent. But the 4th one is a total disappointment.

So we have Robert a ruthless hierarchically climber in law enforcement, with excellent result in his work, he does anything in order to achieve his goals- even kill. Horia and his friend witness such a murder( the gay subject is conveniently inserted here). From here begins the entire action...

In the 4th ep Robert suffers an overnight "lobotomy" and acts like a total newbies... If till here the plot seemed realistic... here things go ballistic, in the wrong way. It is like the movie makers didn't care anymore and wanted to finish faster with it. My biggest problem is the acting. Without exaggeration some of them act as if a stick is inserted somewhere- very stiff, and I now they can perform much better(example Emilian Oprea in Why me)...

There is nothing, nothing that comes remotely close to the poor acting in this movie. It could easily get 7-8 stars if it wasn't for the acting.

Almost everyone is stiff. Nobody talks Romanian like this. There are two scenes when the characters should be raging with anger, and yet the actors are zen-calm, no fluctuation in their voice and only tense their facial muscles as if they are enacting their characters via animojis.

Overall the tv show has a good premise, even if it's a remake of Eyewitness (Norwegian), but the actors just do not deliver. At all. If this was a graduation test for acting school, 9 out of 10 should fail.

A movie produced by HBO, probable low budget, a 17 years old kid on the way to high school?:)), actors playing a cheap theater. Rodica Lazar is missing the reality, Emilian Oprea cheap and unnatural acting unnatural Otherwise SciFi forests,Brasov, gypsy and police. Worth a 1, with great indulgence! I'm wondering why "Umbre" did not continue, even if was as well a copy from an Australian series. About gay story, is something too much for us, I accept but seeing two kids probably is too much. I'm curious what's next? Who's giving more than 1-2 star for such crap, please let me know, probably I did not get the essence of this series. HBO is pushing too much with this cheap copy, just to test our intelligence :))

I'm Romanian. And I'm quite enraged now: how on Earth did they manage to act so badly?

The only one who is good at his job (actually very, very good) is Theodor Soptelea.

Kudos for him, shame on the others.