Dead Silence (2007)

Director James Wan
Writers Leigh Whannell
Starring Ryan Kwanten, Donnie Wahlberg, Michael Fairman, Joan Heney
Genre Revenant
Tagline You Scream. You die.
Country

James Wan and Leigh Whannell are of course the Melbournian, and we wont hold that against them, team behind the original Saw movies and are in Dead Silence trying for something slightly different to the adventures of Jigsaw. To a certain degree they do deliver some chills here, but unfortunately the cold spots are few and far between. It's a rather pedestrian movie that offers nothing new till the actual climax that comes out of left field, and it must be said completely works against the mythology established through the course of the rest of the movie. Got to love a scary movie that simply throws out the baby with the bathwater in the final few scenes as the Writers prove unable to get out of the hole they have dug for themselves. Another edit would have helped here, or heck a better script writer.

Talk us through it

Way back in the past, (you kind of have to have had a sins of the father thing happening in the dim dark past in a revenant movie to explain present day happenings, more on that later), Mary Shaw, a ventriloquist, fell victim to the townsfolk of Raven's Fair. She was implication in the disappearance of a local lad. And to think if the local constabulary weren't the equivalent of the idiot cousins of the keystone cops they would have checked Mary's abode at the town music hall and made a gruesome discovery. Naturally this being a horror flick Mary isn't going to go into that dark night quietly, or at least without leaving something behind.

Mary wants to be made into a doll after her death, and just to be a complete pain in the arse to have her 100 or so ventriloquist dummies buried individually in their own coffins. Naturally the townsfolk proceed to fulfill Mary's wishes, it's not like there's a murder or anything that might have cooled the relationship. Oh wait ... nope never mind this script cannons from plot issue to plot issue, why single this one out.

Flash forward to the present and newly weds Jamie and Lisa Ashen are happily living in the big city well away from their place of birth, Raven's Fair. That crash of thunder you heard in the distance wasn't actually in the movie but you get the idea. The Ashens receive a present, Billy, one of Mary Shaw's dummies. Jamie does a Chinese takeout run and while he's away Lisa comes face to face with the curse of Mary Shaw. Exit one wife, and naturally Jamie is suspect number one due to a closed door murder mystery. Hampering his defence is the fact he informed the police he heard Lisa's voice after she was clinical dead, that sort of thing has a tendency to ruin your day to be honest.

Cutting to the chase here, Jamie is soon on his way back to Raven's Fair to unravel the mystery of who sent himself and Lisa the dummy. He gets more than he bargained for in terms of his father, new mother, oh and Mary Shaw's wooden toy boys. Hampering Jamie at every turn is Detective Lipton who is convinced he knows who murdered Lisa, and it doesn't involve anything like a curse.

Ready to stick your hand up a dummy's bum?

Review

"Who's the dummy now?" - Ella Ashen

Coming off their Saw stint James Wan and Leigh Whannell head into revenant central with Dead Silence. Guess the guys were at a loose end and didn't feel like heading Down Under to make anything half decent. So review included on site as both the Director and Writer are Aussies.

Dead Silence opens with the classic Universal studio logo and the visuals are devoided of colour giving rise to the hope that we are about to see a throw back to the 1930s style of horror, and hopefully not another Van Helsing clone. Pretty suspenseful stuff from Wan but as the movie resolves you have to wonder why the heck they went to the bother of doing the opening scene. Dead Silence is very much a horror flick that plays with the 2007 conventions and doesn't want a bar of any of that last century tosh.

Director James Wan goes heavy with the blue filter in parts, keeps his major scare scenes claustrophobic in their framing, but delivers a reasonably paced ghost story that will keep your attention. Whether or not you will be actually interested in the story line is another matter, besides some plot devices this movie has pretty much been done to death previously.

Nothing new from the Melbourian duo, and to be honest they don't look like they really tried.
work with

So considering the rating I must have discovered some issues with the flick, and to be honest I was actually looking forward to this movie so didn't go in looking for issues. Wan and Whannell provided enough of them anyway and you don't even have to look that hard.

"Beware the stare of Mary Shaw She had no children only dolls And if you see her in your dreams Be sure to never ever scream." - Raven's Fair Children's Rhyme.

Okay it may be just me but shouldn't the above rhyme's first two lines actually, uhmm, rhyme or something? Minor point I know but every time the ditty came out those first couple of lines took me out of the movie as it really did bug me for no apparent reason. [Editor's Note: I'm calling anal].

Even worse was the burial of Mary Shaw after the townsfolk went with the Freddy Krueger thing on her arse. Come on, this strange and lets face facts scary chick is pretty much getting done in without recourse to the courts due to the disappearance of the town lad, so why in heck did they make her corpse into a life size doll, and what was with each of her 100 dummies getting separate burials in doll sized coffins? This development made exactly zero sense to me and simply smacked of plot contrivance. End of day pretty lazy writing, surely Whannell could have spent some time working on this part of the script. Why would the townsfolk go to the trouble of making Mary into a sort of dead doll, as opposed to a New York Doll, and why bury all her dolls in individual caskets rather than throwing them all onto the nearest bonfire? And it's got to be asked who paid the Sextant and was his nickname Digger? Inquiring minds need to know the answer to these questions, oh and why there aren't more Bruce Campbell movie reviews on this site.

Maybe I was expecting something else entirely, my previous experience with Dolls in horror flicks is pretty much restricted to the Psychotic Chucky and family but I do read don't you know. There's got to be a lot you can do with inanimate wooden objects that are by their very naturally fairly freaky. Here the wooden ones are restricted to the odd opening of eyes, turning of heads, and appearing in places they shouldn't be. Or at least Billy does the teleportation thing, the others don't. The actual explanation of the nature of the curse left me simply shaking my head, don't expect dolls on a rampage here. Even worse the explanation disappeared amidst a growing mist of CGI that completely destroyed any hope that Dead Silence had of achieving a modicum of screams in the night. This is pure PG13th stuff aimed squarely at the tweens, who possibly by and large wouldn't be overly worried about the shenanigans going down here in the final analysis anyway.

A little word of advice to Director Wan, ghostly figures do actually work in unnerving your audience, but that presupposes that you see them for more than a split second, are not under a rapid cutting onslaught, and don't have the score threatening to rupture your eardrums at any given moment.

What the hell was Whannell thinking with the actual curse! Okay so falsely accused person, normally a female witch of some description, lays down the curse thing with her dying breath. Everyone is honky dory with this right? But, and it's a big but (hey insert your own J-Lo pun here), Mary Shaw was guilty as charged. What is there some sort of clause in the revenant handbook for ventriloquists or something that allows them to exact revenge even if they got their just desserts? Whannell that was complete bollocks and you know it, go and sit in the corner with the dunce's hat on Bro.

To a certain extent Dead Silence is like the left over pot roast in your fridge. You have dined on it before and sure as hell if Pete the corner butcher has it on sale then you will dine on it again next week. Wan's movie reminded me surprisingly of Darkness Falls, The Covenant, and any number of other movies that have a strong central idea but that simply send it wide in the delivery stride. Some more thought and maybe another edit would have worked wonders here. Oh and perhaps something slightly stronger than a PG13 rating in order to add some spice to this pot luck dinner.

On the bright side of the chisel at least Wan and Whannell were trying for something here, but unfortunately have already become so entrenched in the Hollywood system that they failed to let everything hang out, which by the by was exactly what the movie required. A miss opportunity then, and quite possibly the first nail in the dynamic duo's collective coffin.

Ryan Kwanten (Jamie) is adequate as our lead, but lets face facts any cast member of a teen orientated SOAP could have carried this one off. Donnie Wahlberg (Detective Lipton) simply put in an appearance and let his shaver do the acting. Michael Fairman (Henry Walker) was working for me as the Undertaker with the arcane knowledge that provides Jamie with a glimmer of hope. Stealing scene after scene was Joan Heney (Marion Walker) the slightly deranged chick who releases it's quiet time again. Loved her work in this movie, and it's one of the highlights in an otherwise by the numbers outing.

Special mention of the doll from Saw it gets a cameo in the final act. Hey look out for it, and what's with Wan and Whannell's infatuation with dolls anyway?

It's a PG13 flick what do you reckon on the T&A stakes?

Charlie Clouser provide the score which is actually well suited to Wan's visuals in terms of mood, movement, and feeling. They just needed to turn it down a tad in some scenes. Worth checking out.

Summary Execution So there were a lot of problems with Dead Silence as noted in the main part of the review, but I kind of dug the flick and would definitely be up for another screening. Wan and Whannell are at least trying for something different and to a certain degree they are successful. My major gripe with this movie was that I had kind of seen it before and the script wasn't strong enough to extend the mystery element beyond the first act. You really do need to forget about the resolution as it makes no sense in comparison to the mythology built up through the first hour. Nice idea that you are safe if you don't scream though.

In terms of Box Office results Dead Silence turned into a train wreck for Universal. The movie was budgeted at $20 million but could only manage returns of $16,809,076 in North America and $4,652,831 Internationally. Clearly a costly project for the Studio. From memory the movie did not get a theatre release Downunder, but the DVD is readily available via most outlets.

Dead Silence is worth catching if revenant movies are your thing, or if you only occasionally dip your toes into the dark waters of horror. There's not much new at the core of the movie, but the trappings are at least different from your run of the mill ghostly outing. Overall you will be left with the feeling that with just a bit more work a much better movie could have been delivered than the one that we actually got. I would give it a go if there's nothing else down your local rental place, but keep in mind the silence in the dead of night is unlikely to be broken with screams while you watch the movie.

ScaryMinds Rates this movie as ...

Grab a new release on this one, nothing new but reasonably well done just the same.