The Great Silence

This movie was released just as the pandemic was starting back in March and yesterday was released on VOD.

Also yesterday the rating was around 5,now it's at 3.9 and dropping so that is an indication of the quality of this film.

This is not a suggestion to watch but rather to avoid. Not exactly Post Apocalyptic,more end of the world scenario,with poor acting, bad or nonexistent story. What's worse is that we now know what it's like when a global pandemic hits and how people,governments, WHO etc react. We have that experience now and as life is always stranger than fiction this zero effort scenario is not convincing.

This could have been excellent. Decent performance by female lead, but like many modern TV shows, the movie is simply all about stupid people making stupid decisions at every turn. These people deserved everything that came their way, as they had the collective intelligence of a baked bean.

And another thing: Fighter jets don't fly low over empty farm land in a pandemic! Waste of gas. Huge chance of crashing. Jets fly high, producers, for many good reasons...

Ultimately, this flick was a waste of a decent premise. It's billed as a sci-fi flick, but it's not.

You have been warned.

That I have to fast-forward through. This happens very rarely and I watch lots of films. During the quarantine, I've watched like 20 films and I just want to say I'm sorry since I just couldn't force myself to sit through this one.

It is in fact - boring and unengaging. After literally nothing interesting (besides setting up the premise) happened in the first 40 minutes I was just forced to fast forward through this one and believe me, I've seen a lot of slow films that work. Scenes are there for a reason, these have to establish something, characters, their relations, build up the atmosphere, you should avoid filler scenes in a film.

I don't want to go hard on the creators, but did no one really took a look at this film and say - this just can't work, it's too slow and we clearly have not enough material for a full feature?

The main lead is likable (although distractingly beautiful in a classic sense of the word), her character has an arc, the message in there, literally burning the bridges and killing the past, evolving.

Why not give the script some time and thought? Fill it with something interesting?

Initially I was lured in by this 2020 movie's cover/poster. But turns out that it was actually the most interesting part about the entire movie, sad to say.

Right, well the storyline told in "Before the Fire" (aka "The Great Silence") from writer Jenna Lyng Adams and director Charlie Buhler wasn't a particularly outstanding or entertaining one. Sure, the movie was watchable, but watchable doesn't equal entertaining. I found the storyline told throughout the movie to be way too mundane and generic, if not downright bordering on being boring and pointless.

The acting in the movie was definitely adequate, although the actors and actresses had very solid material to work with in terms of a proper script and storyline. It was a shame though.

As the movie ended, I must admit that I was left with a feeling of being cheated out of something, as well as a sensation of 'was that really it?'. The movie just didn't feel wholehearted. Sure, the story came full circle at the end, but for me it was just a shallow movie experience.

I was expecting more contents with the encroaching virus, as branded in the movie's synopsis, but that was not to be. Sure, it was mentioned and it was there in the peripheral, but it never really played a bigger part in the storyline.

This movie was a swing and a miss, and while I managed to sit through the entire course of the movie, I can honestly say that this is not a movie that I will be viewing a second time. My rating of "Before the Fire" (or "The Great Silence") is a mere three out of ten. The movie was adequate in production value, but lacking in the entertainment department.

As the other reviewer has pointed out, this is more of a drama than a post apocalyptic sci-fi action action film but it has a certain style and captures the pandemic angle using a low budget reasonably well and this has always to be taken into consideration, so there is no CGI and no effects but it does have some merit as the acting, photography and atmosphere is not bad and although the story kinda fizzles out at the end it is bleak , nasty and vicious even though a lot of the story is not explained in detail it deserves a fair and average 5/10.