Silent Thunder

Entertaining for me. It's not a high-dollar explosive, bullets blazing movie. It's stepped back a bit. Acting is above tolerable. Storyline isn't too far off of our America indigenous people (North/Central/South) folklore stories. Indians have had such stories of dog-beings and others-beings for millenniums [or, millennia, if you prefer]. My family consists of several Indians. They prefer "Indian" over "Native American" because their peoples were here long before word America was coined. A "Native American" are all those who have been born in the Americas after the establishment of the word America. I'm a Naive American and a Native Texan, though I'm a mixture of European/African/Asian/Indigenous,+++ many more.

Given my general lack of interest in Western movies, then of course I was not familiar with the 2023 movie "Silent Thunder", from writer and director Isaac Medeiros, prior to stumbling upon it by random chance here in 2025. I do indulge in a Western every now and again and seeing this apparently had horror elements to it, of course I opted to check out the movie.

The storyline in the movie, as put together by Isaac Medeiros, was okay. It was nothing outstanding, but proved fair enough for a single viewing. However, I doubt that come tomorrow, then I will be able to recall the movie.

Of the entire cast ensemble, I was only familiar with actor Ted McGinley. The acting performances in the movie were fair.

The effects in "Silent Thunder" were adequate. It was not a movie that relied heavily on its effects though, but I will say that whatever effects were in the movie certainly worked in favor of the overall enjoyment of the movie.

While "Silent Thunder" hardly was an outstanding movie, it was a watchable one. Though I doubt that I will ever return to watch it a second time.

My rating of writer and director Isaac Medeiros's 2023 movie "Silent Thunder" lands on a four out of ten stars.

Obviously very inspired by Bone Tomahawk, with some significant differences. The acting and budget were certainly far below that of its obvious inspiration. While set in a western time period and maintaining some common western themes, the score and dialog in the movie veered well away from a traditional western, which certainly gave the movie some camp and suggested to me that they knew what they were making and weren't taking themselves too seriously, which is always a plus in my book. The movie started off a bit slow trying to develop a few of the characters, probably a bit more than they needed to be. The movie also didn't lean nearly as far into the horror aspects as I thought it could have, I am guessing because they lacked the budget needed to pull off more gore effects than they did. The genre of western horror isn't exactly saturated with films, and while this is by no means a masterpiece, it is enough fun if you are someone that does want a new western horror to watch, especially if you also enjoy the campy nature of self aware, lower budget films. If you are going into this with high expectations, you will be disappointed. I doubt I watch it again, but I'm not mad that I did.

I thought this was a really well done western horror... One of my favorite genres

Yes, as some other reviewer have said, it does have a lot of similarities to that other well known and well loved movie Bone tomahawk... But still... this one was different enough and cool enough in it's own way that it kept me well engaged and interested.

Told in chapter style, I thought the dialogue was well done and the acting was really well done as well. The casting was great, the pacing was great, and the story was really good too.

I'm obviously not a movie critic, but I know what I like, and I liked this movie. If you're a fan of western horror flicks like I am then give this one a shot... I was glad I did.

It's not even good enough to call it a rip-off. The characters were cardboard cutouts that weren't good enough to call them cliches. The dialog sounded like grade school western fan fiction and was so bad not even the service that provided the close captioning bothered to listen to it - the captions were riddled with mistakes. I didn't bother finishing it because I couldn't care less how it ended, who survived, who didn't, or what happened to them.

My sympathies go out to anyone associated with this movie. No one wants this movie on their resume. Not even the scenario made this movie worth watching.