Dead Silence (2007)

Movie Info

Dolls and puppets are scary…fortunately they don’t use that to scare you.

Jamie Ashen (Ryan Kwanten) and Lisa (Laura Regan) receive the gift of an odd puppet at their home.  When Lisa is killed, Detective Jim Lipton (Donnie Wahlberg) suspects of murdering his wife and mutilating her body.  Heading to his hometown, Jamie investigates the legend of Mary Shaw (Judith Roberts) who allegedly killed the people who screamed.  From his crippled father Edward (Bob Gunton) and his new wife Ella (Amber Valletta), Jamie learns that the legend may be real and that Shaw has a revenge that she intends to fulfill.

Bad ventriloquist…I can totally see her tongue moving

Directed by James Wan, Dead Silence is a horror film from the makers of Saw.  The film was originally titled Shhhh… and also had Silence as a title before Dead Silence was settled upon.  The film was met with poor reviews and bombed at the box office.

I didn’t really enjoy the Saw films but I saw potential them.  I thought with different material and a scary doll, Dead Silence might improve on the production.  Unfortunately, a garbled story and filled with yawns instead of scares downplayed a good idea.

Bet they are going to do something terrifying with this clown…nope…they’re not.

Dead Silence tried to cram too much into the story.  Mary Shaw, the puppets, kidnapped kids, a perfect doll, a curse, a detective tale, and a family torn apart just was too much for a rather short film.  As a result, the plot felt undercooked and underdeveloped.  The movie has the obligatory twist ending which is kind of neat, but since the movie is horrible (and the “perfect doll” part still isn’t very explained), twist flops.

The cast also is very generic.  Ryan Kwanten is a very bland lead, and Donnie Wahlberg sleepwalks through his part as “cop who won’t give up” (which isn’t hard since the character is so one dimensional).  The supporting characters really aren’t very developed and as a result you don’t care if they die.

Ok so is she the villain?

The visuals of the movie do not bolster the script.  They create a great looking creepy doll and they don’t utilize it.  The movie should have been about a horrible doll that rips out people’s tongues who scream…a concept like that just lends itself to visuals and the movie misses that.  You have a scary doll, make a movie about a scary doll (or at least have some great Poltergeist moments)!

Dead Silence isn’t a very good film and wastes a bit of a twist.  The movie was intended to start a franchise and Dead Silence 2 was planned before Dead Silence was released.  With the box office failure of the movie, Dead Silence 2 never manifested…and that is a good thing.

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