Review of Dead Silence (2007) by Arny B — 11 May 2011

James Wan, one of the Saw series' creators, presents his take on killer dolls and ghosts with Dead Silence. I don't know what is it about this guy, but even though I don't think his movies are particularly good, I still get the sense that Wan really loves the genre, which of course is a good thing.

Dead Silence's storyline is unnecessarily convoluted. In short, it is about a ventriloquist named Mary Shaw (played by Judith Roberts in a very effective make up), who died and now her soul lives through her evil dummies. She spends her days stalking our protagonist Jamie Ashen (Ryan Kwanten) for some mysterious reasons, who in turn is also being investigated by Detective Lipton (the ever awesome Donnie Wahlberg) for the alleged murder of his wife. The title "Dead Silence" is a reference to the fact that Mary Shaw only kills when someone screams after her aparitions.

This was the short version, there are actually more characters and plot, but I won't spoil it for you. As I said before, the script is a little convoluted, but overall it is not a terrible story. It's fairly interesting to say the truth, and it has a twist ending that's kind of fun, even if it feels like it was thrown in there just for the sake of having a twist. As for the dialogue, it is terrible since the beginning. When Ryan recieves a ventriloquist dummy in one of the first scenes, her wife suddenly (and conveniently) remembers a ridiculous childhood poem about Mary Shaw. The rest of the film's dialogue is as expository and convenient as in this scene.

The cinematography is actually very interesting. It is not good when you compare it to films like "The Exorcist", but it has a certain something that makes the movie look good. Cheap and cartoonish, but good. Mary Shaw's make up and the dummies are very creepy and well made. James Wan may not be the greates storyteller (he's kind of bad at that), but he knows how to build a scary scene.

All in all, the film is just bad. It has many script problems, bad acting (except for Wahlberg, who is just awesome in every movie I've seen him in), terrible dialogue, and the whole design kind of make it feel like a live action cartoon, but it is still entertaining and very creepy at some points.