Twin Murders: The Silence of the White City (2020) Netflix Film Review

Twin Murders: The Silence of the White City

I really love non-English thrillers and Netflix is good at rolling them out. This time it's Twin Murders: The Silence of the White City. This has to do with the story of a homicide detective who returns to the job as a serial killer and starts back up his killing spree.

And this one has a unique twist to it. The victims are male and female, play side by side, posed, and spaced five years apart in age. Like one set of victims is 15 years old. The next set is 20. Then after that it's 25. And we continue on.

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This is based on a novel or a series, but I've not read it and so all of the characters are brand new to me. The premise of this is pretty intriguing, especially when you take into account the murderer has taken a break and then is resuming their work. And then of course combined just with the oddity of how they choose and how they place the victims.

I've not seen that done on any mystery before. And I kind of liked that, that it was just posed for a certain reason in a certain way. And then of course the progressively every five years, that's a whole different angle also.

There are some crime mysteries where you go the entire length of the show or the movie and you do not know who the killer is until the very end. And then there's some where you know right off the bat who the killer is and then all of the excitement comes from the hunt. Both can be done exceptionally well if written well and then executed on screen well also, you know, from the direction and the editing just that they keep the anxiety and the tension and the intrigue going the entire time.

Both can work really, really well. But if done poorly both are terrible because either you don't care by the time they get to who the killer is, you're like, I've lost interest. Or if it's revealed towards the beginning and they don't keep up that tension, well then you've lost interest as well and that's a fail on both sides and you don't want that.

In Twin Murders, you find out who the killer is about halfway through. And the good thing though is that after that that's when the tension really starts to rise. I felt before that it was just kind of mild.

Like maybe a little bit of intrigue and I wanted to find out who it was because the killing was so unique, but once we found out who it was that's when I was like, ooh, yeah okay, now I'm really invested. I did know who it was before they revealed it. The clues were there and so it wasn't a massive shock to that.

But luckily that's not where it hung. That it was really then the chase and how are they going to catch the killer, that became the crux of everything.

I did like some of the actors but I felt like I was missing parts of either their character, their backstory, their development. Something like here they are and maybe I was supposed to have read the novels first so that I get a better understanding of who these people are. But I just felt like certain nuances of them it was just kind of either left for me to assume or it was so vague in some of the dialogue that it didn't stick with me and I didn't connect and so I'm just kind of going along with there and slowly growing with the characters.

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They're beginning to connect with some of them. Some parts of the story don't make a lot of sense when it comes to the relationships. There is some underlying tension or aggression that comes out but we don't have a basis for it.

There are also some odd things that happen with characters and their actions that don't feel like they're based in reality. Even some situations and relationships between suspects and the cops that don't feel real. Like that they just wouldn't happen in real life.

There is still some good anxiety and good excitement in this even though there are a lot of issues that go along with the relationships. I think that's probably the weakest part of the story is just the relationships and how they choose to develop the characters and show them to us.

But the chase part is fun. So if you are looking for some mystery and intrigue you might want to check this out but do know that there are a lot of better mysteries out there available on Netflix. Some of them are English speaking, some of them are non-English it doesn't really matter.

Trust me this isn't a terrible one, it's just not great. I think it's hampered by the lack of development in some of the characters, some of the relationships and then some of just the odd choices that are made when telling us the story.

I give Twin Murders 2.5 out of 5 stars.

Thanks for your time!