Although it insists on intellectual details about autism ,"silent fall" is a thriller as well as a -not very surprising- whodunit,no more no less.Autism replaces amnesia which is generally THE disease we find in this kind of movie which was not born yesterday (see Hitchcock's " spellbound" )The first part is more satisfying ,and even sometimes intriguing and the relationship shrink/child is not unlike that of "the sixth sense" (1999).Liv Tyler is less decorative than usual .But there are a lot of clichés :good shrink (Dreyfuss) / bad shrink,ponderous symbolism ( the boy cannot stand "round" things,hence his distaste for peas:you will find out why,do not worry),shrink's own story -his wife hints at a certain Billy,a former patient who committed suicide ,another similarity with "the sixth sense"-,and the cop"s love affair..
The shrink knows he's walking on thin ice both literally and figuratively.They could have edited out the last sequence ,probably so-called symbolic, but actually witless .
The shrink knows he's walking on thin ice both literally and figuratively.They could have edited out the last sequence ,probably so-called symbolic, but actually witless .