Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Muted’ On Netflix, About A Killer Whose Every Move Is Watched After He’s Released

Creepy psychological thrillers tend to move slowly, with a tonal soundtrack that’s designed to make its audience feel constantly uneasy. But one of the problems shows like these run into is that they keep their audiences at a distance, making it hard to engage with the story or the psychological stakes. That’s what happens with a new Netflix thriller from Spain.

MUTED: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We pull back on an apartment window in Bilbao, Spain. A woman rides down the street on a bike. She’s knocked off the bike by a falling body that slams into a car. Then, a second body falls.

The Gist: She looks up and sees a guy looking over the balcony. Then we see the teenager come into the apartment, blood on his hands, and slowly make his way to his sister’s room, blood all over the living room. He embraces his sister and says, “It’s over.”

Six years later, Sergio Ciscar (Arón Piper), “The Balcony Killer,” is released from juvenile detention. The entire time, he’s stayed silent, not telling authorities why he pushed his parents over the balcony of the apartment the family lived in. He’s slated to return to that apartment, which he inherited, but before that happens, psychiatrist Ana Dussuel (Almudena Amor) and her team come in and install cameras all over the place. He is also given an ankle monitor.

The idea is that not only will Sergio be shown reminders of the night he killed her parents, but Ana and her team, observing from a nearby office tower, will be able to monitor his every move and his heart rate. It’s an experiment that the young psychiatrist proposed, especially since Sergio refused to talk to anyone trying to get to the bottom of why he did what he did. She also thinks because he’s a toxic narcissist, she’s unsure he won’t murder someone else.

The police department sends Subinspector Cabrera (Aitor Luna) to supervise Ana because, as he said, “No one is watching you.” He’s understandably skeptical about this experiment, and not just because it feels like they’re observing a human being like he’s a caged animal.

Sergio isn’t always silent; he speaks to Natanael (Ramiro Blas), an evangelical pastor who specializes in helping ex-convicts and was assigned by the court to help Sergio. He takes Sergio to his greenhouses, and it seems that Ana has people not only following them but she has access to the cameras on the ferry that takes them to the greenhouses as well as outside the facility. At the greenhouses, he’s given a cross pendant that he hangs up when he works; when he goes back to the fumigated greenhouse to get it, a man worker who objects to his presence follows him. Sergio leaves the greenhouse unscathed yet the man gets carried out in a stretcher, having breathed in too much of the poison. Cabrera already thinks Sergio has killed again.

Ana and her crew spot a teenager outside the apartment; when Sergio returns from work, she gives him a phone number, which turns out to be one that belonged to his estranged sister. The cops find out that the girl, Marta (Cristina Kovani), became a prison pen pal of sorts to Sergio; she’s visited him at the juvenile detention center, and despite the fact that she’s set to move in with her boyfriend Eneko (Manu Ríos), she still has a thing for Sergio. Ana takes a chance and brings Marta in and reveals their operation to her; she thinks Marta is the key to get Sergio to open up.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Muted (Original title: El Silencio) has the same creepy feel as shows like Servant and Them.

Our Take: Created by Aitor Gabilondo (Wrong Side Of The Tracks), Muted moves deliberately, and its characters move in equally deliberate ways. While we don’t know a ton about Sergio or why he did what he did, we know that he’s chosen to be silent with most people. On the other side, Ana paces slowly and holds her hands on her hips at all times, as if she’s in deep thought. Gabilondo have written their characters to be about their quirks and characteristics, which are supposed to tell us all we need to know about them.

We’re not sure if that’s enough. What’s the motivation behind Ana’s experiment and how did she manage to get this approved? Why is Marta helping Ana and the authorities, and why would she put her relationship at risk for Sergio. And, of course, is Sergio really a murderous sociopath or did something else in that household propel him to kill?

We hope we’re going to find all that out, but the first episode didn’t propel any of that plot forward. It was Sergio being watched, Ana watching him, and Cabrera watching her. It putus at a distance from the story and characters in a way that kept us from engaging with it, and we’re not sure how many episodes it’s going to take to get engaged.

What we do know is that the longer we see the characters as a series of quirks instead of having any kind of backstory, the less we’re going to want to see more.

Sex and Skin: Besides a shot of Sergio getting into the shower, there’s nothing.

Parting Shot: Marta enters Sergio’s apartment, somehow aware of where the cameras are, because she keeps looking at them. Will she tell Sergio that he’s being watched?

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to whoever said “there isn’t enough resolution” when Ana asked him to zoom in on what was on the piece of paper Marta gave Sergio. That feels like the first time we’ve heard anyone say that truth on a TV cop show.

Most Pilot-y Line: Natanael gives Sergio a phone after he gives him the cross on a chain. “If you gave me a choice, I’d go for the chain and the cross. With that one, you can talk to God as much as you want. You’ll never have problems with the connection or the signal.” Heh, good one Natanael.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Muted feels like it’s going to keep its audience at arm’s length for its entire 8-episode season, which is not a recipe for a show people will want to binge.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.