Silent Fall movie review & film summary (1994)
And so on, all the way back to the Ace - which is, in a sense, what the psychiatrist is searching for.
"Silent Fall" approaches this story in a solemn way, in one of those productions where everybody lives in big houses surrounded by autumnal woods, and spends a lot of time walking by the sides of lakes. The Dreyfuss character has retired from treating children after a child died while under his care. Now he's hauled out of retirement by the local sheriff (J.T. Walsh, playing a nice guy for a change).
The parents of Sylvie and Tim have been found brutally slashed to death in their bedroom. When the cops arrive, Tim is swinging a bloody knife and Sylvie is cowering in the closet. She saw the killer, a man who escaped before she could ID him.
The cops use pretty sloppy procedure on the case. Sylvie and Tim are allowed to go back to the house to live while it is still a crime scene. Apart from the possibility they might disturb clues, nobody in the movie even thinks it might be dangerous for an 18-year-old girl to be out there unprotected, with a mad slasher on the loose and she as the only witness.
Meanwhile, Reiner goes to work making friends with Tim, hoping he holds the clue to the murders.
There is more. Much more. Some of it involves Linda Hamilton ("Terminator 2: Judgment Day"), as Jake's wife, Karen. She gets second billing but the role is just a hair this side of unnecessary. John Lithgow wanders through in a thankless role as a psychiatrist who believes in using drugs instead of therapy. Mostly the action involves Jake and the little boy, and Jake and the sexy teenage girl, who seems sorta attracted to him.
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