Ventriloquist dummies and horror movies were made for each other. Think about it. Rare is the dummy that doesn't have a malevolent air about it. In fact, the cuter they try to be, the more wantonly homicidal they seem. Mortimer Snerd resembles Ted Bundy's inner child and Waylon Flower's Madam is a visitation from your darkest nightmare. You would have to be the reincarnation of Ed Wood to make a killer dummy movie that wasn't at least a little creepy. While the makers of Dead Silence aren't that incompetent, they did succeed in making a movie so bland and formulaic you'd get more chills by watching an old Smurfs episode.
Young Jamie Ashen and his family are terrorized by the evil shade of ventriloquist Mary Shaw. Ashen and Mary share only the most tenuous of plot convenient connections but it's enough for the ghoul to unleash her wrath on the poor guy. To make matters worse the police suspect Ashen for Mary's bloody crimes. Ashen returns to his decaying home town to lay Mary's troublesome spirit to rest and, needless to say, she doesn't go quietly. Here you see Dead Silence's problem. The emphasis is not placed on the dummies but on the undead ventriloquist and Mary Shaw is simply not that scary. She's just a moldy old lady in a black dress. The dummies themselves spend most of the movie staring at people, which they do very well as you might expect. Every now and again one might turn its head. This action generates more creaking and groaning than a dozen clipper ships at full sail. Thus the ventriloquist dummy's potential for terror is squandered in a movie that seems hell bent on being as close a clone of Nightmare On Elm Street as possible without violating copy write laws.
Dead Silence's cast does nothing to relieve the movie's stale atmosphere. As Ashen, Ryan Kwanten is competent without being in any way interesting. He is a wispy chinned adolescent who hardly looks old enough to date let alone marry. None the less Laura Regan plays his wife. Regan is spunky and extremely likable and one wishes the movie followed her exploits rather than Kwanten's. Michael Fairman gives an effective and moving portrayal of an old undertaker traumatized by the supernatural weirdness surrounding him. As a result he seems to have walked in from another, better movie. The same can be said of Bob Gunton as Ashen's wheel chair bound father. The only actor to find the right tone is Donnie Wahlberg. He doesn't so much act the cop assigned to Ashen's case as embody all the quirks we've come to expect from cinematic law enforcement. I don't think we are supposed to believe this guy for a second. Instead we are supposed to be amused and that we are. The movie goes dead when Wahlberg isn't around.
Like most movies these days Dead Silence looks beautiful. In set design and cinematography it is everything anyone could want in a killer dummy movie. Weirdly, the only place where the design falters is in the look of Mary's dummies. Billy, the main dummy, looks almost charming. Considering the inherent creepiness of ventriloquist dummies, this took some work. Where was the fellow who carved Mortimer Snerd when they needed him? Dead Silence can't be completely disliked. It does try to inject some good old fashioned atmosphere into a modern horror flick and still keep up the gore factor. Unfortunately it misses both its marks by a wide margin. As it stands Dead Silence is a movie made to be ignored.
Young Jamie Ashen and his family are terrorized by the evil shade of ventriloquist Mary Shaw. Ashen and Mary share only the most tenuous of plot convenient connections but it's enough for the ghoul to unleash her wrath on the poor guy. To make matters worse the police suspect Ashen for Mary's bloody crimes. Ashen returns to his decaying home town to lay Mary's troublesome spirit to rest and, needless to say, she doesn't go quietly. Here you see Dead Silence's problem. The emphasis is not placed on the dummies but on the undead ventriloquist and Mary Shaw is simply not that scary. She's just a moldy old lady in a black dress. The dummies themselves spend most of the movie staring at people, which they do very well as you might expect. Every now and again one might turn its head. This action generates more creaking and groaning than a dozen clipper ships at full sail. Thus the ventriloquist dummy's potential for terror is squandered in a movie that seems hell bent on being as close a clone of Nightmare On Elm Street as possible without violating copy write laws.
Dead Silence's cast does nothing to relieve the movie's stale atmosphere. As Ashen, Ryan Kwanten is competent without being in any way interesting. He is a wispy chinned adolescent who hardly looks old enough to date let alone marry. None the less Laura Regan plays his wife. Regan is spunky and extremely likable and one wishes the movie followed her exploits rather than Kwanten's. Michael Fairman gives an effective and moving portrayal of an old undertaker traumatized by the supernatural weirdness surrounding him. As a result he seems to have walked in from another, better movie. The same can be said of Bob Gunton as Ashen's wheel chair bound father. The only actor to find the right tone is Donnie Wahlberg. He doesn't so much act the cop assigned to Ashen's case as embody all the quirks we've come to expect from cinematic law enforcement. I don't think we are supposed to believe this guy for a second. Instead we are supposed to be amused and that we are. The movie goes dead when Wahlberg isn't around.
Like most movies these days Dead Silence looks beautiful. In set design and cinematography it is everything anyone could want in a killer dummy movie. Weirdly, the only place where the design falters is in the look of Mary's dummies. Billy, the main dummy, looks almost charming. Considering the inherent creepiness of ventriloquist dummies, this took some work. Where was the fellow who carved Mortimer Snerd when they needed him? Dead Silence can't be completely disliked. It does try to inject some good old fashioned atmosphere into a modern horror flick and still keep up the gore factor. Unfortunately it misses both its marks by a wide margin. As it stands Dead Silence is a movie made to be ignored.