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Title: Where Silence Lies (2025) Director: Nicholas Moore Writer: Andrej Kukoljac Studio: Moore Digital Studios IMDb Plot: After a brutal massacre leaves a powerful family dead, the sole survivor becomes the focus of a high-pressure interrogation where every answer only deepens the mystery. Joe Says: Where Silence Lies is scrappy, talky, and confidently small. Where sharp dialogue and a tension-full script gives the presentation bite.

Where Silence Lies is a claustrophobic look at deception riding a lighting bolt that twists and turns before it explodes. Indie producer-director Nicholas Moore traps the whole thing inside a pressure cooker of an interrogation room and makes it feel twitchy, alive, and ready to crack. This is the kind of stripped-down gamble that usually screams “stage play in disguise,” but sharp dialogue and a tension-full script gives the presentation bite.

Andrej Kukoljac keeps the setup lean: a brutal murder, a lone survivor, and a narrative that keeps shifting its weight. Alexandra Sommese’s Audrey Bouchard glides between fragile and calculating with just enough ambiguity to make every answer feel like a trap. Across from her, Detectives Ramos and Collins (Jennifer Mkoma and Rich Graff respectively) spar as detectives who are just as combustible with each other as they are with their suspect. Solving the case nearly becomes less of a priority to instead seeing who breaks first, while control slips through everyone’s fingers.

Moore’s direction doubles down on confinement. The film is shot in a restrictive set within a police station. No flashbacks, no narrative timeline jumping, no stylistic escape hatches, just faces, words, and pressure. The lighting stays low, the score stays subtle, and the performances carry the film like pros. Sommese, especially, cycles through charm, menace, and vulnerability with a sly confidence that stops the repetition from fully settling in.

That said, the script does loop on itself at times, circling similar beats like it’s stalling for a confession. Buying time instead of tightening the screws. And while Marx Mitchell’s Captain Phelps adds friction, he also feels imported from a generic cop show. The film tries to remix the genre yet it could have gone harder. The media pressure, Audrey’s family, and other assorted dirty secrets are peppered about that never quite get the full interrogation treatment. There’s a sharper, more uncomfortable version of this story lurking just beneath the surface that never quite gets dragged into the light. The ending comes in a bang but doesn’t fully decompress. 

The movie plays out like a longform episode of Criminal: UK, a procedural co-created by George Kay where the focus is strictly on police interrogators and their interviews of the subject. Moore adapts this formula but throws in a few kinks allowing Sommese’s Audrey to beef up a more cinematic femme fatale role. 

Where Silence Lies is scrappy, talky, and confidently small; the kind of indie that knows its limits but dares to be experimental. Not flawless, but gripping enough to keep you locked in the room with no key in sight.

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Where Silence Lies is hitting the film festival circuit. Check out upcoming screenings, as well as all official links, at Linktree.