Dead Silence review by The Grim Ringler
No doubt about it, right up there with clowns come dolls
as the stuff of nightmares. Maybe it’s our fear of joyful things, or just that
they’re like tiny, creepy babies, or maybe it’s movies
like this that just put these dolls in a bad light.
A man’s wife is brutally murdered while he is out getting
take out dinner for them and not long after they’d gotten a strange package on
their doorstep – a ventriloquist’s dummy. The wife thinks it’s cute and laughs
at it, but the husband isn’t so amused. There’s just something familiar and
scary in its gaze, and it reminds both of them of an old rhyme from their home
town. The doll proves to not so cute after all when something kills the woman
while her husband is away and to the man, it seems as if this doll must be
connected to this murder. After being accused of being the culprit behind the
murder of his wife, the man heads off for his home town in the hopes of
uncovering who it was that sent the mysterious dummy and thereby who murdered
his wife. What he finds though is a town hidden in the shadows of a dark past.
Even years after his leaving the town still cowers at the name of Mary Shaw, a
woman who had had a deep love for her family of dolls. This woman had been a
performer and had a small theater where she put on performances with her
dummies. But it seems Mary was not one to suffer a willful child so when a
young boy disappears it is Mary that gets blamed. Not long after it is Mary
that has gone missing and so the town raises a marker for her grave and then
buries all of her ‘dolls’, her family, and the town then hopes that the woman
and her curse can be buried. The real terror of Mary begins though after her
apparent death as people in the town begin turning up dead, their tongues
ripped out and the bodies positioned as if for a portrait. Now Jamie, back home
and looking for a murderer begins finding clues that seem to point to the
return of Mary and her curse and he must find his wife’s killer and find the
answer to what really is happening in his home town.
The first thing you need to keep in mind here is that
this, to me, is an utter throwback to some of the better, creepier films of the
‘80’s. This reminds me a lot of Dolls
but that isn’t to say that this is a remake of that film or a rip-off. What
director Wan has done is to take that
sort of atmosphere and the sense of dread and to use that as his template. This
is the sort of traditional horror film that many say the genre has strayed from
and I think that this may have been a case where the filmmaker’s previous films
(he worked on Saw) may have hurt
this film’s chance at getting some people in the seats. This is not Saw with dolls. Not at all. (Though, you may see Billy, the puppet from that
film somewhere in the background). This is a decently paced ghost story about
the old woman in town who was a witch. That’s the story, essentially. The
crappy thing here is that so much is
done right that it’s a shame that the things that are done poorly really have
such a negative effect on the whole.
The acting
Donnie Wahlberg
and can appreciate his talent but man, they really
sold him out here. His character – a caricature of the hard-nosed cop with a heart of gold – is laughable
at best and the logic he uses is all too similar to cop logic from the ‘80’s. First
they play him all tough as nails, then he’s downgraded
to a sort of Columbo, only to become the side-kick at
the end. AAARGH! I say. The rest of the cast is decent enough, though most are
not given terribly good dialogue in the least. Like the first Saw though, you have some great set-ups
and a fantastic premise that’s lessened by the amateurish characters that are
created.
As for the horror, it’s very well done. The dolls are
creepy and for the most part are not overplayed throughout the film. The town
is beautiful and reminded me of one of the Phantasm
ghost towns. The story is nice in that campfire tale way. The best part is the
ending, which is, again all-too familiar for fans of the ‘S’ movie but it plays
out pretty well here and manages to shock. Personally, I admire the film more
as an idea than a reality.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the film and, for the rating I am going to give it, think it’s still worth a look and a purchase.
I just think that the concept and design is better than the reality. The set designs, the story, the dolls, the scares, the parts of the movie are great, but the characters and dialogue really let the film down in the end.
Would I recommend seeing it? Sure. It’s got a lot to offer, and fans of the Saw series can do with a refresher about what old-school horror films are like. I love that this is an old fashioned horror film. We need more films like that. I just wish this had more to offer than a simple campfire tale. It’s good as that, but it could have been much better.
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