Psycho's Movie Reviews #289: Dead Silence (2007)

Dead Silence is a 2007 American supernatural horror film directed by James Wan and written by Leigh Whannell. The film stars Ryan Kwanten as Jamie Ashen, a young widower returning to his hometown to search for answers to his wife's death. It also stars Amber Valletta, Donnie Wahlberg, and Bob Gunton.

Dead Silence was theatrically released in the United States on March 16, 2007, by Universal Pictures. The film was dedicated to Gregg Hoffman.

Plot

Jamie Ashen and his wife, Lisa, receive an anonymous gift of a ventriloquist doll called "Billy". When Jamie goes out to pick up their takeout dinner, a figure attacks Lisa, who is pregnant, causing her to have a miscarriage and scream. Jamie returns home and finds her dead with her tongue cut out. After Jamie is released from custody by Detective Jim Lipton due to lack of evidence, he spots inside Billy's box a mysterious message about "Mary Shaw", a deceased ventriloquist from his hometown, Raven's Fair.

Returning to Raven's Fair, now old and rundown, Jamie visits his estranged, wealthy and wheelchair-bound father, Edward, and his much-younger wife, Ella, for information regarding Mary Shaw. Dismissing them as superstitions, Jamie arranges for Lisa's funeral with the help of a local mortician named Henry Walker. Henry's senile wife, Marion, warns Jamie that Mary Shaw's spirit is dangerous and urges him to bury Billy. Jamie does so but is confronted by Detective Lipton, who followed Jamie and finds his actions suspicious.

Henry explains to Jamie that Mary Shaw was a famous and popular ventriloquist who was publicly humiliated when a young boy named Michael rudely claimed that he could see her lips moving during one of her performances. Some weeks later, Michael disappeared and his family blamed it on Mary Shaw and lynched her. Mary's last wish was to have her body turned into a doll and buried with her 101 dolls, who she called her children. Henry, then still a child, saw Shaw (after she was turned into a dummy) rise up, but was spared thanks to his silence, because Mary takes her revenge by killing those who scream. Jamie finds out that Michael, who actually was murdered by Mary Shaw, was his great-uncle. As part of Mary's lynching, the Ashen family forced her to scream and permanently silenced her by cutting her tongue out; as such, she has since been seeking revenge against their entire bloodline and all those in Raven's Fair by killing them using the same method.

Mary Shaw kills Henry Walker and Detective Lipton discovers that all of Mary Shaw's dolls have been dug up. He informs Jamie and is just about to arrest him, when Jamie receives a call from "Henry", asking him to go to Shaw's old theatre to prove his innocence. At the ruined theatre, Jamie and Lipton discover 100 of the dolls in their massive display case, along with Michael's body, which had been turned into a marionette. Mary reveals to Jamie that she killed Lisa because, unbeknownst to him, she was pregnant with his son, thereby killing any potential new-born of the Ashen family. Jamie and Lipton burn the theatre and all of Shaw's dolls, but Lipton falls and screams, sealing his fate.

Back at his father's residence, Jamie is confronted by Mary, but repels her by throwing Billy into the fireplace. He learns, much to his horror, that his father actually died long ago; the current "Edward" is actually a doll converted from his corpse, controlled by Ella, who is the "perfect doll" that Mary Shaw created just before her death. Jamie screams in terror as Ella, possessed by Mary, kills him.

The film ends with Jamie reciting a nursery rhyme about Shaw while a photo album with human puppets is shown: Lisa, Henry, Lipton, Edward, Ella, and Jamie himself. Mary closes the book, her revenge now complete.

Release/Reception/Box Office

Dead Silence was released in the United States on March 16, 2007, with an "R" rating for Violence.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 21%, based on 81 reviews, with an average rating of 4.00/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "More tasteful than recent slasher flicks, but Dead Silence is undone by boring characters, bland dialogue, and an unnecessary and obvious twist ending." On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 34 out of 100, based on 15 reviews, indicating "generally unfavourable reviews".

In the United States, as of April 16, 2007, the film's total domestic gross has been worth US$16.8 million (according to Box Office Mojo), and screenings of Dead Silence were ceased in most theatres 16 days following its release; the film's estimated production budget was US$20 million. As of April 1, 2009, US$5,572,971 has been generated globally. Worldwide, the film has grossed $22,382,047. Tentative plans for a sequel were abandoned.

Budget $20 million

Box office $22.4 million

My Review

Dead Silence starts late one night as Jamie (Ryan Kwanten) & Ella Ashen (Amber Valletta) hear a knock on their apartment door, they open it to discover a mysterious package which contains a large trunk with a ventriloquist's dummy inside. Jamie goes out to buy some dinner but when he returns he finds Ella has been murdered, although not arrested the cop's think he did it so does a little detective work to try & clear his name. Following the logic that whoever left the dummy has something to do with his wife's death Jamie heads back to his home town of Ravens Fair where the dummy was made & where spooky nursery rhymes about an old lady seem to have some connection to Ella's murder...

Directed by James Wan this is a pretty good old school styled ghost story, after the huge success of Saw (2004) Universal Pictures gave him more than ten times the budget he had to make Saw (or rather more accurately to make the sort of money Saw made) & Dead Silence is what Wan came up with. The script by Leigh Whannell takes itself very seriously & tries to recreate the chill's & shock's of those old haunted house type flicks with a few modern twists thrown in there for good measure. There's plenty of atmospheric scenes of people wandering around in the dark or through rundown buildings although I did become a little tired of it's repetitiveness at times. The majority of it's 90 minute duration is rather sedately paced & if you go into Dead Silence expecting killer dummies slashing a teen cast up then your going to be very disappointed. Dead Silence takes it's time to build a story, to create an atmosphere, to establish what's going on & who people are as well as sprinkle lots of clever little clues & red herrings throughout so the twist ending has maximum impact. The one thing people remember & raved about Saw when it came out was the twist ending & Wan serves another great twist up here at the end of Dead Silence, in fact I would say the twist in Dead Silence is better, more surprising, easily as memorable & just downright great. There are plenty of people who don't like the twist I'm sure as I am equally sure there are many who claim that the twist is obvious, well I like to describe these people as being 'wise after the fact' & it's fine saying 'oh that was obvious' once you have seen it but I doubt very much anyone who hasn't seen Dead Silence before or who haven't been told about the ending will be able to predict it.

Director Wan does a fine job here & the film literally drips atmosphere, it has a period 40's type feel to it which I suspect is no coincidence since that's when there were a lot of live ventriloquist acts. The dummy has been a staple part of the horror film for decades, from the insipid Magic (1978) staring Anthony Hopkins to two memorable Tales from the Crypt episodes The Ventriloquist's Dummy (1990) & Strung Along (1992) maybe the most well know examples. I guess ventriloquist's dummies are just creepy slightly distorted images of ourselves which is why we find them frightening & somewhat disturbing. The dummy here in Dead Silence looks good but doesn't really do anything, in fact at no point do we ever see it 'alive' so to speak, it moves it's eyes & we see it's hand move but nothing else & there certainly isn't any scenes of it killing anyone although it is hinted that it is responsible. The gore levels are low, there's a few dead bodies with bloody mouths but zero else.

With a supposed budget of about $20,000,000 & filmed in Ontario in Canada Dead Silence is well made with high production values, I would have thought that most of the money went on the look & style of the film rather than flashy effects, big name stars or gore. The acting is solid from a relatively unknown cast.

Dead Silence is an entertaining ghost film, don't go into it expecting killer dolls & lots of gore as it just doesn't happen. It's a touch slow going at times with a lack of dramatic incident but the story is strong & fairly involving while the twist ending is really good & made the previous 85 minutes well worthwhile. I liked it. 6/10