A twenty-three-minute short based on one of Stephen King’s lesser-known stories, Mute is, like many of the writer’s best tales, a tale of ordinary life. Until it shows its dark side, and even then it’s not out of the realm of the possible. It’s the kind of story you swear you remember reading about something similar in the paper or heard about in passing on the news one night, an urban legend in the making.
Monette (Andrew Bee, Suicide Squad, The Taste of Blood), a travelling salesman, walks into a church and requests the priest (Christian Tribuzio) take his confession. While travelling, Monette picked up a hitchhiker (Alexandre Stoupenkov) who was deaf and mute or at least claimed to be. Even though, or more accurately because, he couldn’t hear him, he made the perfect person for Monette to vent about his wife and her infidelity. An act of oversharing that will have unintended consequences.
“I really wanted to execute the first feeling I had from reading the novel Mute and I didn’t want to overthink pace or style. Adapting Stephen King’s work is no easy doing, but being a devout fan I wanted to make one of his stories and render it justice with the right cast.”
Kyle Dunbar
Adapted and directed by Kyle Dunbar, Mute is a quiet, dialogue-driven tale with no effects or flashy camerawork. Almost all of the film’s success rides on the shoulders of Andrew Bee as he tells his stories. First to the hitcher and then to the priest. It’s an approach that will probably turn off those who need a more action-focused script. Or those who hear King’s name and immediately think of vampires, werewolves and undead toddlers.
But for those that like his more folksy stories, Mute should be a nice treat. Bee gives a solid performance and the story builds to a satisfying, if not entirely unexpected, conclusion. Mute makes its debut this weekend at London’s, the one in the UK not the one in Ontario, London Rocks Film Festival. You can check the film’s Facebook page for more details and future showings.