Directed by James Wan
Starring Ryan Kwanten, Amber Valletta, Donnie Wahlberg and Michael Fairman
Another movie from the "I can't believe I haven't seen this until now" file, although I've gotta admit...I kinda wish it still was. Dead silence isn't a terrible movie by any stretch, but it's not terribly GOOD, either. I remember that it was released with a ton of buzz and publicity, as pretty much any flick with James Wan's name attached to it has been since the release of Saw.
Ah, James Wan. Like him or hate him, I don't think it can be denied that this dude has been the single most influential guy in horror for the past decade. With Saw and its never-ending series of sequels, in addition to the Insidious films, The Conjuring, Annabelle, Demonic, the list of big-time horror movies with his name attached to them is pretty impressive. And now he's attached to the Fast and Furious movies, which are as downright terrifying as anything listed above in the fact that they continue to gross as much as the GDP of a small country despite being terrible. I base that astute analysis on the one movie in the franchise that I've seen (2 Fast 2 Furious) and the bias that I can't stand Vin Diesel and I'm not a car guy. What CAN'T be denied, however, is that Wan has a unique style that quickly got duped by endless imitators in the spate of "evil ghost" movies that followed in his wake.
And in between Saw and evil ghosts...there was Dead Silence. How's that for a segue?
Like pretty much any horror with a brisk 90-minute-or-so running time, this movie wastes absolutely no time getting going, introducing us to James Ashen (Kwanten) and his wife Lisa (Laura Regan). This loving couple has just received a very curious gift in the mail - a puppet named "Billy" in an unmarked package. When James leaves to get some take-out Chinese, Lisa begins hearing strange noises emanating from the puppet...and when James comes back, he finds his wife in the kind of severe mutilated state reserved only for the books of Clive Barker. It's actually a pretty impressive set piece, so +1 to the movie in that regard.
At this point, the character that serves as the proverbial cock blocker of all fun shows up. Played by Donnie Wahlberg, police detective Jim Lipton exists in this movie solely to be an annoyance to James and the audience, giving his best Keystone Cops-style routine whenever he's onscreen as he smarms it up trying to attach the death to James. I also need to point out that Ryan Kwanten is just not very good as the lead guy here. This role - a husband who has just lost his wife - calls for way more emotion than this guy was willing to dole out, so the good will that we got with the set piece is lost in short order. Unfortunately, the movie only regains it in short bursts from here on out.
James heads back to his hometown of Ravens Fair after discovering that this is where the curious puppet arrived from, quickly meeting his estranged father (Bob Gunton) and his much younger wife Ella (Valletta). The story of familial ties really is the backdrop to the rest of the story, however, as the movie begins to flip-flop between two alternate story lines. First, there is James and the odyssey of the puppet, as he discovers that Billy belonged to legendary local puppeteer Mary Shaw - subject of a local nursery rhyme that isn't quite "1, 2, Freddy's coming for you" on the horror movie coolness scale. Needless to say, the ol' bat REALLY liked puppets. Story line number two involves Wahlberg sporadically showing up to harass James, believing his trek back to Ravens Fair to be an attempt to bury evidence of his wife's murder.
As you can tell by this point, I wasn't particularly enthralled by the story of this movie. After countless other James Wan movies, this really did feel like more of the same. A bit unfair, since this movie preceded the meat of his "ghost movie" output, but what can you do. That would all be a moot point, however, if I thought the movie worked as a thriller. It does, but only in short spurts.
See, this is one of those movies that is pretty heavy on back story. Mary Shaw is your star villain in this movie, with the puppets - Billy and otherwise (spoiler alert) - serving as her revenge against James' family line after she was blamed for the murder of their ancestor Michael, who heckled her during a performance many years ago. Freddy Krueger-style-mob justice scene later, and Mary is a vengeful ghost. There are moments when we're supposed to be creeped out by Billy himself, and this effective...sometimes. Then, there are moments where the ghost of Mary Shaw appears to James, and this is effective...sometimes. But not really. In essence, what we get here are a bunch of startling "LOUD NOISES" scares that have become very prevalent in recent years, and it's not any more effective of a tactic here than it is in anything else.
This is also a movie that likes to pile on the twists and exposition, especially in the final trimester. By that point, I was tired of story. Note that I haven't even touched on the subplot involving the elderly couple who were around when Mary Shaw was alive. You can Paypal me fifty bucks if you really want the dirty details on that - or look it up on Wikipedia, whichever you prefer.
There really isn't much more to share about Dead Silence. Having seen a couple of Wan's later flicks, he would definitely perfect the formula that he started here in his subsequent efforts. This movie is a little too scatterbrained for its own good, with too many characters and subplots crammed into its lean running time. Coupled up with a cast that isn't terribly interesting, and you've got an only intermittently scary movie that's hard to get into.
** out of ****. Admittedly, the puppets and Shaw are pretty effective villains. However, everything else lets that premise down. Avoid this one.
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