Naman Shrestha
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (known for ‘Game of Thrones‘) and Annabelle Wallis (known for ‘Peaky Blinders‘) star in the Robin Pront directorial, ‘The Silencing,’ an action thriller movie that follows a reformed hunter named Rayburn Swanson who leads a secluded life in the wilderness, following his teen daughter’s disappearance five years ago. Still looking for the killer, the hunter saves a young girl from a serial killer and gets pulled into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse.
Joining forces with the town’s sheriff Alice Gustafson, Rayburn gets closer to bringing the serial killer to justice who might be the one responsible for his daughter’s disappearance. The isolated cabin where the hunter stays and the misty wilderness where the serial killer hunts act as additional characters that bring more eeriness and suspense to the plot while also keeping the viewers guessing where ‘The Silencing’ was shot.
The Silencing Filming Locations
Originally, the shooting of ‘The Silencing’ was supposed to take place in Europe but for some reason, the production was moved to Ontario, particularly in Greater Sudbury. Lasting for a total of 26 days, the shooting got underway in April 2019 and wrapped up in May of the same year. So, let’s navigate the wilderness where the protagonist hunts for the killer, and get to know all about the specific sites that feature in the movie!
Greater Sudbury, Ontario
A major chunk of ‘The Silencing’ was taped in Greater Sudbury AKA the City of Greater Sudbury, a large city in the northern part of Ontario. First and foremost, most of the cabin scenes, interiors as well as exteriors, were lensed on location in and around a real cabin in the city. Moreover, the frozen lake scene where Rayburn and the sheriff track the murderer was reportedly recorded on a portion of Ramsey Lake, which is situated near the city’s downtown core.
During a conversation with Screen Rant, the filmmaker, Robin Pront, was asked about the process of finding the apt filming locations. He explained, “I tend to make films that are kind of drowned in bleakness, so it was very important to me that we found a location that was equally as bleak as my imagination. Sudbury is a town that’s been driven by industry and mining and all that stuff. Mining doesn’t exactly make your town look like a fairy tale, so it had those aspects that I really liked. And then, of course, it was surrounded by wild nature and all that stuff. There’s a beautiful waterfall that you see in the beginning of the movie. We were just driving past it, and I said, ‘I have to get this into my movie.’ And that’s how that whole opening scene came about, because I was like, ‘I need to use this location.'”
Talking about shooting the action-packed scenes in the woods with Borrowing Tape, Pront said that he came face to face with the freezing cold in Ontario in his jeans and a summer jacket, after which he had to buy an entire wardrobe to get through the first few weeks of the shooting schedule. He added, “Shooting the scenes in the woods were demanding, not only for me but for the whole crew. We did not have a chopper to drop us off at the location unfortunately so we had to walk everywhere, through the mud and snow. But when you yell action, you tend to forget everything and just be focused on what’s happening on the monitor.”
Read More: The Silencing Ending, Explained: Who is the Killer?
