Director: James Wan
Writers: Leigh Whannell
James Wan
Tagline: You scream. You die.
Plot: A widower returns to his hometown to search for answers to his wife’s murder, which may be linked to the ghost of a murdered ventriloquist.
Cast: Ryan Kwanten – Jamie Ashen
Amber Valletta – Ella Ashen
Donnie Wahlberg – Det. Lipton
Michael Fairman – Henry Walker
Joan Heney – Marion Walker
Review:
Well, I’m back after a few month pause so now I can (finally) continue writing reviews. Today I’m going to review Dead Silence, directed by James Wan, who also directed the first Saw movie. According to these two movies, it seems James Wan likes to incorporate dolls in his work of art. Many people are naturally afraid of dolls so they could find this movie to be genuinely scary. Besides dolls, Dead Silence also features ghosts and few nice kills. Although all of this sounds promising, Dead Silence is just your another average popcorn horror flick – which is a huge disappointment…
So anyways, this guy, Jamie Ashen, finds a mysterious package in front of his doorstep which contains a ventriloquist doll named Billy. Jamie leaves Billy with his wife Lisa, while he goes out to buy some dinner. Unfortunately for Lisa, she gets brutally killed and Jamie is taken to the police as a prime suspect – but he suspects the doll did the morbid deed. Very early in the movie, we can see a standard horror “jump scare” scene followed by great effects of a victim’s deformed face. From this point of the movie (and to the very end) my thoughts were pretty mixed up. On one hand the atmosphere wasn’t bed at all although the color that dominated through out the whole movie was “dark blue” (another irritating cliche in modern horror movies – they have to be dark blue). And on the other hand all the characters seemed pretty undeveloped, wooden and sometimes even annoying. Furthermore, as the movie progresses on, we are being introduced with more and more, often stupid and silly, informations and elements of the plot. It’s like the scriptwriters could not focus on a single plot, but had to bring up something new every now and then. In conclusion, all of this collides into one huge ending filled with all of this random shit (I couldn’t find a more proper word to describe it). The thing that saves Dead Silence from a total disaster is a very interesting twist that happens in the very last minute of the movie. But despite being great, the twist makes the whole movie seem pretty much pointless and it may leave you somewhat unsatisfied.
But, of course, if you are new to the horror genre or just a sucker for horror movies with dolls and ghost you’ll be more than satisfied with Dead Silence. However, outside those boundaries, Dead Silence offers nothing new and is just another slightly predictable, shallow and simple modern horror movie filled with uninteresting and cliched characters. Therefore, I think it’s better to avoid watching Dead Silence and watch something else instead.
My Rating: 5/10… A very strange combination of dolls and ghosts. I assume this is the kind of movie you either love or hate. Me? I didn’t like it all.
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