I had two films to review which actually are quite similar.
One is this Das letzte Schweigen, The Silence, and the other one which is from Belgium is called The Treatment.
Both films are excellent thrillers European style, which is slower, more surgical the their Hollywood counterparts if you wish, being The Treatment a little bit more dynamic in terms of pace but not that much really.
These movies are sometimes hard or even painful to watch because they deal with a very disturbing matter which is the children sexual abuse by adults mostly men, pedophiles, sexual predators filling the worst space possible in terms of sexually oriented mental illness, and I say this because despite our feelings for these monsters, (they are people truly sick, they can not help themselves, to the point that many of them want to be castrated or even executed because of the remorse and the guilt) are truly hard, particularly people like me with kids of our own.
This film is made almost documentary like, it brings to mind John Mc Naughton's Henry, portrait of a serial killer with the great performance by MIchael Rooker, being that character a guy in a murderous rampage not only with kids but everyone who get close.
Great acting of the whole cast, with Ulrich Thomsen who is mostly known for the american TV show Banshee, which is full of violence, sex, crime and there Thomsen shines as the former Amish crime boss as one of the two deranged sexual abusers here.
I'm not going to say anything to spoil this movie. Just that it's very well made, disturbing trough and through and from start to finish this is not your typical pop corn thriller but a study of extremely sick people, dark, depressing and showing you that monsters are out there for real and many of them are there to stay.
I'm not getting into technical aspects because in that field the film is correctly made but in my opinion the story and how this is told is the important thing.
Really a serious take no prisoners thriller if you are not afraid of real life nightmares.
