Movie Review: 'Silo' is Better Suited for Reality TV Documentary than Feature Film

The newly released movie Silo, opening in some theaters and for on-demand rental on Friday, May 7th, plays like an episode of the reality crime series, I Survived, if that show were reduced only to re-enactments. This slight and slim drama about the potential dangers inside a midwest grain bin, has a strong central conceit but the flat, perfunctory performances and rote subplots play out as soggy melodrama, more public service announcement than movie.

Silo stars Jim Parrack as Junior, a struggling farmer in a nondescript Midwest farm town. Junior has inherited his farm earlier than expected. Junior’s father, played by Chris Ellis, has developed Alzheimer’s and Junior is struggling to care for him while also maintaining their farm. Junior is aided by Sutter (James Deforest), an experienced old farmhand, and a pair of teenagers, Cody (Jack DiFalco) and Lucha (Danny Ramirez).

Cody and his mother, Valerie (Jill Paice) are deeply at odds. Cody’s father died not all that long ago in a car accident and since then, the two have struggled. While Mom works as a nurse, Cody broods in his home recording studio where he records heavy metal songs that he performs entirely on his own. It’s mom who encourages Cody to get out of the house and work over at Junior’s farm.

For his part, Cody appears to be a good hand on the farm. He likes working in the field and with his best friend, Lucha, and is up for all tasks. His enthusiasm however, is what leads to the turn of the dramatic screw in Silo. Though Cody and Lucha have been around the farm for some time now, they’ve never been inside the grain silo until this day. Sutter has called on the boys to help him get a bin unstuck, a dangerous but necessary job that becomes even more perilous when Junior’s dad, confused and unaware, tells Junior they need to load a corn truck for a long ago haul. Junior obliges in an attempt to reach out to his addled father and unaware that his employees are inside the silo.

For those who don’t know, Grain Bin Safety is no joke. Corn in a grain silo is not unlike quicksand, a wrong step could lead to literally drowning in corn. Dozens of farm workers die every year in grain bin accidents and rescue technology has been invented specifically in the last several years just to deal with the enormity and difficulty of rescuing someone who is drowning in a grain bin.

Thus, I will say that Silo does have a solid dramatic premise. Sadly, the execution of that premise is lacking. Director Marshall Barnett is a solid technician but the dramatic subplots about mother and son and father and son amount to very mild melodrama. Late in the film another subplot emerges involving a firefighter, Frank, played by Jeremy Holm, who may have been responsible for the death of Cody’s father. Frank has an urgent need for redemption by saving Cody from the silo but again this subplot also plays like weak tea despite the efforts of the actors involved.

In the end, Silo is a very watchable movie, there are no beats in the film that are terribly off. Rather, it’s just such a thin premise that it cannot sustain momentum and interest. All of the drama is limited to the inside of the silo. Outside of the sweaty, frightening, claustrophobic walls of corn slowly sucking Cody under, the subplots of Silo simply don’t hold up. The subplots exist solely to pad out the length of Silo to feature length. They’re perfunctory, functional, and rather benign.

Silo would probably make for a terrific 44 minute episode of I Survived in which a survivor of a grain bin accident tells their incredible story of survival after the fact. But, as a feature film, the premise is strained and the drama is lacking any time we aren’t thinking about the horror of drowning in loose corn.

Silo opens in limited theatrical release and for on-demand rental services on Friday, May 7th, 2021.