Dead Silence

2007

Action / Crime / Fantasy / Horror / Mystery / Thriller

148
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 51% · 84 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 51% · 100K ratings
IMDb Rating 6.1/10 10 107879 107.9K

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Plot summary

Jamie returns to his hometown in search of answers to his wife's murder, which occurred after receiving a weird package containing a ventriloquist dummy named Billy, which may be linked to the legend of ventriloquist Mary Shaw. Destined to find out the truth, Jamie goes to the town of Raven's Fair, where Shaw used to perform and is buried. But Jamie is in for more than he expected.

Director

James Wan Photo
James Wan

Top cast

Enn Reitel Photo
Enn Reitel as Billy
Donnie Wahlberg Photo
Donnie Wahlberg as Det. Lipton
Ryan Kwanten Photo
Ryan Kwanten as Jamie Ashen
Amber Valletta Photo
Amber Valletta as Ella Ashen
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay 2160p.BluRay
751.79 MB
1280*720
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 29 min
Seeds 9
1.44 GB
1920*1080
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 29 min
Seeds 48
3.99 GB
3840*2160
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 29 min
Seeds 11

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Weirdling_Wolf 7 / 10

I quite enjoyed the evil exploits of the malevolently mannequin manipulating Mary Shaw and her supremely sinister 101 Dollnation!

After a villainous ventriloquist's dummy is delivered to the home of handsome Jamie Ashen (Ryan Kwanten), and his pretty wife Lisa (Laura Regen), this perfidious puppet very soon belies its inert demeanour, as 'Billy' utilizing murderous means most macabre dispatches Kwanten's pale Mia Farrow Lookalike wife in an especially jaw-droppingly diabolical manner! Thusly burdened with grief, our dishy widower high-tails it to his gloomily dilapidated Silent Hill-esque home-town in his ubiquitous Hollywood hero's muscle car in order to discover the possibility of there being some monstrous truth behind the childhood rhyme extolling the evil exploits of malevolent Mary Shaw and her supremely sinister 101 Dollnation had anything to do with his sinuous spouse's savage snuffing out! A goodly number of noughties 'horror' films are based on creepy urban legends, and James Wan's predictably jump-scare laden 'Dead Silence' rigorously maintains the zeitgeist. The sleekly fashioned fright-flick reeks of Hollywood artifice, from the screamingly obvious polystyrene tombs, plentiful usage of Fright Night fog, and delightfully hokey, hunchback-less Guignol theatre, wherein the grim-faced Mary Shaw's infamous legend was so menacingly born!While the shocks are somewhat muted, perhaps in an attempt to avoid the boggle-eyed wrath of hissy missy Mary, the film's more endearing qualities are the delicious comedy stylings of a deadpan Donnie Wahlberg as the wryly disdainful cop Detective Lipton, his colourful performance increasing the faux-Gothic campery herein. For me, as a horror film-maker, Wan is a somewhat pallid practitioner, but the dude has legit comedy chops, to whit, the blackly funny, wickedly witty 'Tales From The Crypt' twist, and if all noughties horror titles were replete with a similarly cartoonish cynical cop like Donnie I'd be more of a fan! While 'Dead Silence' is about as scary as a mislaid till receipt, it proved to be all so fabulously absurd I couldn't help but dig it! Usually I relish the dire misfortune that descends so fatally upon the expensively coiffed heads of Hollywood's perfectly plastic protagonists, but in this rare instance I had enormous empathy for the dotty old dear gibbering benignly away in the mortician's cobwebbed cellar, this truly darling, whimsical white-haired octogenarian Marion Walker (Joan Heney), and dynamic cop Donnie got me rooting for 'em right till the final curtain, mayte! One of the more aesthetically pleasing aspects of 'Dead Silence' is the splendidly evocative chiaroscuro photography of talented DP John R. Lionetti, this gifted fellow also lensed the deliciously skewed, greatly underappreciated Lindsay Lohan oddity 'I Know Who Killed Me'.
Reviewed by preppy-3 7 / 10

Pretty good

Story about Jamie Ashen (Ryan Kwanten) whose wife is killed--her tongue ripped out of her mouth--although there was only a ventriloquist's dummy in the house. Detective Jim Lipton (Donnie Wahlberg) thinks Jamie is as guilty as hell...but he didn't do it. He traces it back to his home town and a dead lady ventriloquist named Mary Shaw and her creepy dummies.This movie rightfully opens with the old Universal logo used in the 1930s. It fits--this is not a blood and guts movie. Heck it barely warrants an R rating! There's no nudity, sex, swearing and all the violence happens off screen. The views of the dead people--which are pretty gruesome--probably gave it the R.This is a good solid horror film. It has some quiet creepy chills (especially at the beginning with the dummy on the bed) that really work on you--especially if you find dummies downright unsettling (like I do). There are some "jump" shocks with things leaping out at you--but not much. It has great music, nice direction (love how the maps become real) and has some truly eerie settings. The acting won't win any awards but it's pretty solid. Kwanten is good as the lead and Wahlberg has a few nice and purposefully funny moments in his role. It all leads up to a climax (on a dark and stormy night no less) and a final twist that works just great--even though it doesn't make a lot of sense. This is for those horror viewers that don't need blood and guts shoved in their face to enjoy a movie. I give it a 7.Best line: "Who's the dummy now?"
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