That Silo centers around the people of the town is what differentiates it from a media satire like Ace in the Hole, and places it alongside The Straight Story, God's Own Country, and Minari: films that feel like studies of rural life.
The After School Special vibe at the back of Marshall Burnette’s Silo isn’t a bug. It’s a feature. Because beyond creating a captivatingly suspenseful premise with which to build a plot, grain entrapment is a significant enough issue to demand a path towards awareness as much as cinematic entertainment.
If Burnette’s formal instincts are suboptimal — the pervasive backlighting and underlighting keep much of the action in shadow — his dramatic instincts are worse.