Dead Silence(2007 / R)
When I first saw the trailors for Dead Silence I thought that the movie
looked promising and very creepy. However before the trailer had even finished
I had made the assumption that it was probably gonna be just another PG-13
piece of crap. Much to my surprise at the end of the trailor I see an R rating!
So it was with much excitement that myself and the rest of the
HMN crew headed out to our local cinema to be financially raped in order
to see this flick on the big screen.
In the end I did enjoy the movie. The creepy factor was very very high and
there were quite a few good scares in the movie. In fact the girls sitting
next to us in the theater screamed very loudly at every scene they were intended to.
The movie played them like marionettes...speaking of dolls, did I mention there
are killer dolls in this movie? Yup, thats the premise. Mary Shaw was a renowned
ventriloquist who after the mysterious disappearance of a young heckler is killed by
the townsfolk and buried with her dolls. Periodically the dolls would show back and
where go the dolls goes Mary Shaw's vengeful spirit. If you see her and scream she'll rip out your tongue and kill you...or at least that's the legend.
Mary's target in this film is Jamie, as Jamie is apparantly related to those that killed
Mary Shaw. Jamie does a lot of stupid things and is kind of an idiot. Like he knows that
where he comes from dolls are a bad omen, however when a mysterious package containing
a creepy looking doll shows up on his doorstep he not only brings it into his hime, but
he leaves his wife home alone with it (she dies)! He deserves what he gets in the end for being
stupid and generally unlikeable.
The "plot" was good in concept, and the scares and creep factor were high. Also very cool is the manner in which the movie earns it's title. Whenver Mary is about to appear any noise not made directly by the victim or by the dolls/Mary is completely silenced (i.e. the dripping of water, the ticking of a clock, etc...). However in
between the scares the movie was actually pretty cliched and generic. I'm still
going to give this movie a good rating just because I thought that Mary Shaw
was that incredibly creepy. This movie had the potential to be great but it did fall short.
Two other quick notes before I rate this puppy:
1. Donny Wahlberg plays a cop on the trail of Jamie over suspicion on his wife's murder. His
character if very amusing.
2. The Saw doll makes a cameo in the film... see if you can catch it.
4 Bruce Campbell heads.
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