Dead Silence


Dead Silence is a 2007 American supernatural horror film directed by James Wan and written by Leigh Whannell. The film stars Ryan Kwanten, Judith Roberts, Donnie Wahlberg, and Amber Valletta. Upon release, it was a box office bomb, grossing only $22 million against a $20 million budget.

Plot

Jamie Ashen and his wife, Lisa, receive an anonymous gift of a ventriloquist doll called "Billy". As Lisa is playing with Billy while Jamie goes to pick their carry-out dinner order, a figure approaches her, causing her to scream. Later, Jamie returns home and finds Lisa dead with her tongue cut out. After Jamie is released from custody by Detective Jim Lipton due to lack of evidence, he spots inside Billy's box a mysterious message about "Mary Shaw", a deceased ventriloquist from his hometown, Raven's Fair.
Returning to Raven's Fair, Jamie visits his estranged and wealthy father, Edward, who uses a wheelchair, and his much-younger wife, Ella, for information regarding Mary Shaw. Dismissing them as superstitions, Jamie arranges for Lisa's funeral with the help of a local mortician named Henry Walker. Henry's senile wife, Marion, warns Jamie that Mary Shaw's spirit is dangerous and vehemently urges him to bury Billy. Jamie does so, but shortly afterward is confronted by Detective Lipton in his motel room, the latter still doubting Jamie, after returning from the cemetery where Mary Shaw and the rest of her dummies are buried.
Henry tells Jamie that Mary Shaw was a famous and popular ventriloquist who was publicly humiliated when a young boy named Michael rudely claimed that he could see her lips moving during one of her performances. Some weeks later, Michael disappeared, and his family blamed it on Mary Shaw and lynched her. Mary's last wish was to have her body turned into a dummy and buried with her 101 dolls. Henry, then the young son of the local mortician, saw Shaw rise up, but was spared thanks to keeping his mouth shut, because Mary takes her revenge by killing only those who scream. Jamie then finds out that Michael, who was indeed murdered by Mary Shaw, was his great-uncle. As part of their lynching of Mary, the Ashen family forced her to scream and permanently silenced her by cutting her tongue out; as such, she has since been seeking revenge against their entire bloodline by killing them using the same method.
While crawling under his house after discovering Marion with Billy, Henry is killed by Mary, who steals his tongue. Detective Lipton then discovers that all of Mary Shaw's dolls have been dug up, and informs Jamie, who receives a call from "Henry", asking him to go to Shaw's theatre as he has a way to prove Jamie's innocence. There, both Jamie and Lipton discover 100 of the dolls lined up in their massive display case, along with Michael's body, which has been turned into a marionette. Through a clown doll, Mary reveals to Jamie that she killed Lisa because, unbeknownst to Jamie, she was pregnant with his son, thereby killing any potential newborn of the Ashen family. Jamie and Lipton then burn the theatre and all of Shaw's dolls, though in the process, Lipton falls and screams, causing him to be killed by Mary.
Back at his father's residence, Jamie is confronted by Mary, but he repels her by throwing Billy into the fireplace. He then learns, much to his horror, that his father had already died long ago; the current "Edward" is actually a doll converted from his corpse and controlled by Ella who, it turns out, is the "perfect doll" that Mary Shaw created just before her death. Jamie then screams in terror as Ella, possessed by Mary, lunges forward and kills him.
The film ends with Jamie reciting a nursery rhyme about Shaw while a photo album with human puppets is shown: Lisa, Henry, Detective Lipton, Edward, Ella, and Jamie himself.

Cast

Release

Dead Silence was released in the United States on March 16, 2007, with an "R" rating.

Box office

In the United States, as of April 16, 2007, the film's total domestic gross has been worth US$16.5 million, and screenings of Dead Silence were ceased in most theatres sixteen days following its release; the film's estimated production budget was US$20 million. As of April 1, 2009, US$5,408,331 has been generated globally. Worldwide the film has grossed $22,217,407.
Tentative plans for a sequel were abandoned.

Critical reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 20%, based on 80 reviews, with an average rating of 3.87/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "More tasteful than recent slasher flicks, but Dead Silence is undone by boring characters, bland dialogue, and an unnecessary and obvious twist ending." On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 34 out of 100, based on 15 reviews, indicating "generally unfavourable reviews".

Home media

The film was released on DVD on June 26, 2007 with an "unrated" version also released, and the same occurred for the HD DVD product. The film has since grossed US$17,304,718 in overall DVD sales.
Dead Silence was released on Blu-ray Disc in the United Kingdom on October 25, 2010. In May 2015, it was announced that Universal Studios would be releasing the film to Blu-ray Disc in the U.S. It released on August 11, 2015.

Soundtrack

released the soundtrack of Dead Silence on March 20, 2007. The CD contains 31 tracks, the first track being the song "We Sleep Forever" performed by American rock band Aiden. The rest of the CD is taken up by Charlie Clouser's film's score. Clouser has worked on many film scores such as the Saw series and .
;Track listing
  1. "We Sleep Forever" – Aiden
  2. "Main Titles"
  3. "Sheet"
  4. "Blood"
  5. "Apartment"
  6. "Raven's Fair"
  7. "Dad's House"
  8. "Ella"
  9. "My Son"
  10. "What Poem?"
  11. "Caskets"
  12. "Motel Hearse"
  13. "It Can't Be"
  14. "Funeral"
  15. "Billy"
  16. "Perplexed"
  17. "Steal Billy"
  18. "Lips Moving"
  19. "Coffin"
  20. "Photos"
  21. "Map Drive"
  22. "Guignol"
  23. "He Talked"
  24. "It's Soup"
  25. "Full Tank"
  26. "Doll Wall"
  27. "All the Dolls"
  28. "One Left"
  29. "Mary Shaw"
  30. "Dummy"
  31. "Family Album"

    Alternate footage

Many alternate scenes were released on the unrated DVD and HD DVD and are listed below:
In his personal blog, screenwriter Whannell reveals the origins of the film within the context of the "Hollywood" film industry. In a candid post entitled "Dud Silence: The Hellish Experience of Making a Bad Horror Film", Whannell explains that the film was conceived following the advice of his agent at the time and that a "script doctor" was eventually employed by the production studio. Whannell concludes the post with a description of the key lessons that were learned following the Dead Silence experience:

After everything is said and done, I'm almost glad Dead Silence happened, because it gave me an extreme, coal-face lesson in what not to do. It was like learning to swim by leaping off Niagara Falls. I only write scripts on spec now, which means that I write them in my own time without getting paid and then take them out into the world to see if anyone's interested. Never again will I enter the arranged marriage of selling a pitch. I have also become very gun-shy about working with studios. In the world of independent film, what you write ends up on screen. Plus, they don't have the money to bring in script doctors! Works fine for me. Who knows, maybe one day I will work with a studio again...