DEAD SILENCE, which bills itself as a horror movie the last time I checked, is about the ghost of a ventriloquist living through a dummy named Billy to exact retribution on the descendents of the angry mob who killed her… I don’t think it’s a scary idea either. Especially if the the Billy doll looks a hell of a lot like Democratic Presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich. I noticed that and, because the movie gave me precious damn else to focus on, I imagined some old lady with her gnarled septuagenarian hand up Kucinich’s ass.
And this alone was scarier than anything in DEAD SILENCE… Let that image sink in, and it will save you ten bucks.
DEAD SILENCE is an exercise in tedium the likes of which I have rarely seen. I didn’t know you could stretch ninety minutes to the length of fuckin’ WAR AND PEACE. It takes a dull premise and alchemically mixes it with a whisper of a plot, thin characters, bad acting and a little bit of admittedly decent camerawork. Huzzah! They turned lead into shit!
Ryan Kwanten, whom I have never heard of, (and judging from the box office receipts from this excuse that calls itself a movie, I never will again) plays Jamie Ashen. He and his wife get a package in the mail that contains little Billy. He goes out for takeout and he comes back to find his wife is dead with no tongue. He gets taken in for questioning, finds the puppet was sent from his hometown of Raven’s Fair. This is a quaint little town where every weekend they light up their torches and burn down the windmills Frankenstein is hiding in.
Naturally, there’s a ghost story behind this. Turns out there was a ventriloquist in the thirties named Mary Shaw. She didn’t have any kids, but a shitload of dummies. By this rationale, the CRAZY CAT LADY movie should be coming any day now.
Anyway, without giving too much away, she didn’t take hecklers very well. So her ghost comes back to haunt the descendents of her pursuers and if they scream, she rips out their tongues… And I didn’t know that could kill you. In fact, last time I checked, it didn’t. Ah well.
This is the part of my review where I talk about the actors and the characters, and… I got nothin’… How was YOUR day? See, I focus on characters in a movie because without them, you don’t have anything else. Would HALLOWEEN or A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET have been as good if you didn’t have Laurie Strode and Nancy Thompson to care about and root for? Thought not. It makes the proceedings scarier. And some will piss and moan about how you don’t need good characters in a splatter flick to have a good time. And true, I didn’t give a shit about anyone in SEE NO EVIL, but that was fun and had the courage of its convictions. DEAD SILENCE doesn’t even have that. Check this out…
There is no gore in DEAD SILENCE.
None.
See what I fuckin’ had to deal with, here?
There are a couple of things I could say I liked in this, but even those come with deep reservations. I will admit that there are some strong images, but they are sullied by some of the most amateurish DP mistakes I’ve ever seen. If there are any aspiring cinematographers reading this, take these next words to heart: Color desaturation does not automatically make your movie look cool. In fact, on the days where the sun is shining and you make the sky around it gray and overcast, it makes you look like a retard.
And I could also kinda-sorta recommend Donnie Wahlberg as the cop assigned to investigate the death of Jamie’s wife. There are a couple of times where Jamie acts like an idiot, then a couple of scenes later Wahlberg shows up to rub in how big an idiot he was being. This provides some catharsis for frustrated viewers like me. It’s almost like he wandered in from another, better movie. And yet… HE’S DONNIE WAHLBERG! He’s the white Tito Jackson! I mean honestly, who gives a shit?
DEAD SILENCE was written by Leigh Whannell and directed by James Wan who, in 2004, gave the world the adaptation of the board-game MouseTrap it was waiting for… Or SAW, as it is known to most. First off, what the fuck is it with these two and puppets? Yes, the Jigsaw puppet makes a cameo, so stop asking. But secondly, DEAD SILENCE is a brave way to announce to the world “WE ONLY HAD THE ONE GOOD IDEA!” This movie is derivative, which isn’t a Cardinal Sin in and of itself. In fact, Quentin Tarantino and Rob Zombie turn derivation into art on a regular basis. But those two do it with a blunt verve and we marvel. Whannell and Wan rip off so much (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, obviously CHILD’S PLAY, a lot of the Hammer stuff and the list goes on) and at the same time that the theatre is deafened by all of us not giving a shit. Even the use of the Old School Black and White Universal logo at the beginning had me scratching my head. Surely they did it because George A. Romero did the same thing with LAND OF THE DEAD a couple of years ago. Surely the delusions of grandeur by these two couldn’t be that big that they would compare themselves to him OR the classic monster movies like FRANKENSTEIN or CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON… Could they?
But this film brings an altogether darker portent. As much as I had problems with SAW, we all had it to thank for the new horror Renaissance we’ve been basking in for the past couple of years. DEAD SILENCE marks the beginning of its end. There will come a time (and it will come soon) when naughty folks like me, WIL, Molly and everyone else on this site will have nothing to write about because the horror product will become so watered down that people will refuse to go see it. And the people who fostered it into this new age will run scrambling for the money and the work will suffer. Whannell and Wan jumped ship from Lion’s Gate to the major studio Universal. So this well-budgeted and rare horror effort from a big studio has no brain and blood nary in its veins or on screen. But it’s from the SAW guys, so let’s cynically market that one point to the extent that it will get a few more fanboys into the theatre, huh? Then they pull the rug out, making us all look foolish. The young and edgy rebels from a scant three years have now become the establishment.
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss… And ain’t that a bitch?
1 out of 4
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