Silo Review Apple Tv+ Series: It is Addictive, at Times Really Exciting
Cast: Rebecca Ferguson, Tim Robbins, Rashida Jones, David Oyelowo, Common, Harriet Walter, Avi Nash, Chinaza Uche
Directors: Morten Tyldum, Morten Tyldum
Streaming Platform: Apple Tv+
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Silo is the new original series coming to Apple TV Plus starting May 5th. Rebecca Ferguson (Dune, Mission: Impossible – Fallout) plays the protagonist of this adaptation of the science fiction novels that make up Hugh Howey’s Silo Trilogy. After the success of The Last of Us, here is another post-apocalyptic scenario in which we fight for the survival of mankind. The series consists of 10 episodes, of which you will find the spoiler-free review below. When it comes to science fiction series, now the lowest common denominator that seems to unite the vast majority of these products in a single aesthetic/visual cauldron is the greatness, the grandiloquence of the show. This is hardly surprising, given where Hollywood cinema has also headed in recent years. It is therefore a pleasure to be able to enjoy a show like Silo which, on the contrary, chooses the opposite direction, namely that of a product with a coherent vision but above all based on a strong idea of narration.
Silo Review Apple Tv+ Series: The Story Plot
Silo tells the story of the last ten thousand people on Earth, who live more than a kilometer deep, protected from the toxic and deadly outside world. No one knows when or why the Silo was built, and anyone who tries to find out faces fatal consequences. The fiction stars Juliette, an engineer who is looking for answers about the murder of a loved one and finds herself trapped in a much deeper mystery than she could have imagined, which will lead her to discover that if lies don’t kill you, the truth will.
The novels written by Hugh Howey are the basis of the new Apple TV+ series: the main setting is precisely a huge Silo in which an unknown number of human beings have been locked up for centuries. The outside world has been devastated and the only salvation has been confinement, creating a new society made up of strict rules and a rigid social ladder. However, some community members begin to doubt that the reality outside the fortress/prison is made up only of death and devastation. Among them is Allison (Rashida Jones), wife of Sheriff Holston (David Oyelowo), intent on uncovering the truth about what is really going on. The woman will set in motion a chain of dramatic events that will see the engineer Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) protagonist almost despite her, a woman with a painful past who wants to discover the truth about the “accidental” death of her lover.
The first episodes of Silo directed by Morten Tyldum (Oscar nomination for The Imitation Game, Passengers) have a dramatic depth worthy of the best productions of this genre. The director manages to make the most of the enormous work of composition of the main set to create an atmosphere of placid despair, an environment that protects and at the same time does not allow those who live confined there a real freedom of expression. The pathos generated by the personal story of the characters brings Silo closer to some pillars of negative literary utopia, first of all, 1984 by George Orwell. In addition to a pilot of undoubted emotional impact, the next two episodes also immerse the viewer in a very well-defined universe, whose aesthetics somehow refer to steampunk in the desire to use retro sets and costumes – even if in this case the precise reference it’s the 70s.
As the story progresses through the episodes, the show focuses more on the development of the plot and the detection, slightly losing effectiveness in the representation of inner conflicts. Notwithstanding this discrepancy, Silo is still a show that knows how to entertain with evident competence and knowledge of the rules of dystopian science fiction. Credit for the success must also be attributed, if not mainly, to a remarkable cast of actors. Rashida Jones is the absolute and exciting protagonist of the first episode, an all-around female portrait who immediately becomes heroic in her search for the truth. In the next episode, it’s up to David Oyelowo to elevate Holston’s figure, leading him through a precise and painful human parable.
Silo Review Apple Tv+ Series and Analysis
The rest is done by a partial Rebecca Ferguson, capable of endowing the character of Juliette with an almost repelling emotional ferocity. The Scandinavian-born actress works beautifully in developing a body language and a type of acting capable of explaining the inner life of the character, a female figure that is far from obviousç the inner wounds of the woman are represented by the abrupt shots, by the angry, from words let out even just by gnashing your teeth. We are light years away from the elegant and charismatic performances through which we learned to appreciate Ferguson: in Silo she offers us a new range of possibilities as an interpreter of hers, confirming an admirable versatility.
Silo may not be one of the most original sci-fi series ever made, but the lucidity and visual coherence with which the writers and creators have made it testify to its high workmanship. We are faced with a rather evident understanding of the genre and its subtexts, a factor that goes so far as to confirm how much Apple TV+ which also gave us the remarkable Foundation based on Isaac Asimov, whose new season we await with trepidation – knows how to choose with discreet care when it comes to telling our present through the filter of the fantastic. This is a society that has seen its history erased and replaced by another. The inhabitants of the Silo do not have the remotest idea of why they live there nor do they know anything about the exterior, beyond the images on a monitor, ancient objects that they call relics, and the gossip of conspiracy theorists.
They have their own repertoire of customs, sayings, and expressions and they all live together under the security of a kind of democratic dictatorship. A government with a strong sense of authority that controls birth and keeps everyone in their assigned place. In any other series, the first episode we see here would surely have taken place in the middle of the season, since this is a flashback that is not told from the point of view of the protagonist, but from the exciting Rashida Jones and David Oyelowo. However, creator Graham Yost’s decision gifts us with what is likely to be one of the best drivers we’ll see this year. It is a chapter that lays the foundations of the plot and its universe in all areas, and it does so through a beautiful story that in turn works as a love letter to curiosity, truth, and rebellion.
After this comes into play the Juliette of a magnificent, complex, and nuanced Rebecca Ferguson. Ferguson moves through the Silo alternating the interpretation of her in a non-linear narrative that, although it can be confusing during the first bars of it, helps to develop and deepen the society and its setting De Ella. Of course, the Silo is like a character unto itself, a mass of concrete and metal that remains impassive and claustrophobic as it molds its inhabitants to its whims and needs. Throughout the ten episodes, in the series, we see how fragile, manipulable, and dependent any kind of society is. It’s a plot that takes time to unfold, but it’s a necessary space for all this puzzle of flashbacks, events, and characters to make any sense in the end. Right now, it is a pleasure to see performers of the stature of Tim Robbins, Will Patton, Harriet Walter, Geraldine James, or Iain Glen star in power struggles, complicated parent-child relationships, and all kinds of conspiracies in a Silo that, for good and for wrong, it is a reflection of our world.
It is true that the series gets lost and spins around itself with no apparent direction during the central episodes, especially since the slowdown is especially noticeable after a spectacular third episode. The chapter that, by the way, demonstrates the capacity of fiction to be intense and exciting even in events that a priori is inconsequential to the main plot. And if it doesn’t fully take advantage of this ability, it’s because, after all, this is an aspect inherited from the original material that Yost adapts as faithfully as possible. It is a premise whose key points are very similar to those seen in ‘Snowpiercer‘, although nevertheless, it prefers the solemnity of masterpieces of science fiction such as ‘Dune’ or ‘Foundation’. After all, the series is full of the typical rules of the genre: a totalitarian regime, a rebellion of the protagonists, and a planned separation between human zones and wild or uninhabitable spaces… But, in addition to its parallels and analogies with the world real, this is a proposal that especially explores philosophical questions taken directly from Plato ‘s famous ‘Myth of the Cave’.
Silo Review Apple Tv+ Series: The Last Words
Thus, Silo is one of the best science fiction series of recent years. It is not ‘Separation’, ‘The Expanse‘ or ‘Westworld‘, but it is certainly a “must” for those fans who enjoy the most classic branch of the genre or, failing that, post-apocalyptic stories that do not wallow in zombies or deadly diseases. It is addictive, at times really exciting and its audiovisual section is a delight. In addition, Yost manages to offer enough ingredients so that most veteran viewers of television also find an excuse to stay. In short, Apple has done it again. It may not be one of the most original sci-fi series ever made Silo, but the lucidity and visual coherence with which the writers and creators have made it testify to its high workmanship.
Credit: Besay Garcia Benitez
