Monday, October 20, 2014

Movie Spotlight: Dead Silence

Dead Silence is a 2007 movie starring Ryan Kwanten, Amber Valletta, Donnie Wahlberg, Michael Fairman, Bob Gunton, Laura Regan, and Judith Roberts.  The movie begins with newlywed Jamie Ashen (Ryan Kwanten) receiving a ventriloquist's dummy from an anonymous source.  Jamie leaves to pick up dinner, and when he returns, he finds his wife (Laura Regan) dead--murdered by Billy the evil dummy.  (You left your wife alone with a creepy ventriloquist's dummy?  Don't you know you're in a horror movie?!) Detective Lipton (Donnie Wahlberg), the cop in charge of the case, thinks that Jamie is responsible for Lisa's death and is determined to prove it. (It should be noted that Detective Lipton is a straight-up weirdo who takes his electric razor everywhere and shaves at really inappropriate times.)  Jamie returns to his hometown to bury Lisa and find out the truth about Billy the dummy.

The movie was directed by James Wan, who also directed The Conjuring and Insidious, and while Dead Silence was not nearly as well-done or as scary as those movies, it was better than I expected a movie featuring ventriloquist dummies to be.  All of the actors were very good, and the filmmakers managed to avoid making the dummies look cheesy while they were threatening or murdering people (which probably isn't easy to do).

My rating: 6.5/10

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