Movie Review: Dead Silence

Starring:
Ryan Kwanten, Amber Valletta, Donnie Wahlberg, Bob Gunton, Judith Roberts, Laura Regan

Director:
James Wan (Saw, Death Sentence)

Synopsis:
In the wake of his young bride's mysterious death, grieving newlywed Jamie Ashen is forced to return to his haunted hometown, where he butts heads with the ghost of a creepy ventriloquist who was infamously murdered years ago, and is somehow attached to his family.

My Two Cents:
When I think of creepy stuff, my second choice is always ventriloquist dummies. My first choice? The Burger King. There’s something about those hell dolls that makes them scary. You stare at them, waiting for them to move. Their blind stare is hypnotic, and those awful mouths… the horror! I like scary movies, so a movie about the dolls I hate so much sounds like a perfect deal, and even sweeter if the team responsible is the same one that made the Saw movies. Can’t top that… right?

A newlywed couple receives a mysterious package at the front door of their apartment, and inside is a creepy-as-hell dummy called Billy. He comes in his own little box that sort of resembles a coffin. Charming. Lisa (Laura Regan), the wife, recalls an old scary urban legend about a ventriloquist woman named Mary Shaw who was murdered and came back from the dead to steal people’s tongues if they screamed. The husband, Jamie (Ryan Kwanten), runs out to get some Chinese food or something and when he returns he finds his wife dead, with her jaw broken and her tongue ripped off. Hmm… I wonder who could have done that?

Police Detective Jim Lipton (Donnie Wahlberg) suspects Jamie of murdering his wife and follows him to his hometown, Ravens Fair, a town as depressing as Silent Hill but without the twitching, deformed people. Jamie visits his father (Bob Gunton) and meets his new stepmom Ella (foxy MILF-ish Amber Valletta) and asks them about Mary Shaw. It turns out about 70 years ago Mary Shaw’s ventriloquist act was the town’s main sensation at the local theater, but one kid in the audience shouted he could see her lips moving, making Miss Shaw royally pissed off. The boy went missing shortly after and everyone suspected Mary of kidnapping and probably murdering the boy. So what was the town to do? Kill the bitch, of course, and bury her with her 101 dolls. I guess every little no-name town needs shit like this to stand out.



So that’s the plot. Jamie runs around town asking people questions while Mary Shaw kills pretty much everyone around him. That’s just stupid. If she’s pissed off at Jamie why doesn’t she just kill him instead of killing people around him to scare him? When you finally learn why she hates him so much, you don’t even care anymore. That’s because Jamie sucks, Detective Lipton is a jerk, Mr. Ashen, the father, offers the worst performance of his career, thus, you don’t give a shit about him, and the doll is shown so often he stops being scary and starts being hilarious. This is not a scary movie at all. Some stuff is creepy, like the dolls and maybe a few scenes with Mary Shaw, but that’s it. The whole plot is laughable and predictable and the effects are ass. There’s a slightly cool plot twist at the end, but if you’re still awake by then you just won’t care and it doesn’t make that much sense. You need to check the DVD’s alternate ending to understand what the hell was going on, and then you realize that movies with alternate endings suck balls because it’s evident the writers didn’t know what the fuck to do with the movie, so they made stuff up as they filmed it.

The only good thing about Dead Silence, besides not watching it, is catching the Jigsaw puppet cameo (from Saw) near the ending. It’s on the floor next to a wooden column, in the scene where Mary Shaw inexplicably turns into a clown.

Score: