Dead Silence Review

"Dead Silence" has a promising pedigree, given that it's written and directed by "Saw" creators Leigh Whannell and James Wan and features that classic horror movie standby, the ventriloquist's dummy. Unfortunately, the film is frequently laughable and stupid rather than scary as Whannell and Wan have rather missed the point about what's so scary about ventriloquist's dummies in the first place.

The film opens with young newlyweds Jamie and Lisa (Ryan Kwanten and Laura Regan) mysteriously receiving a ventriloquist's dummy in the post. Jamie then pops out for some take-out and returns to discover that Lisa has been murdered and has had her tongue cut out for good measure. Sceptical cop Donnie Wahlberg doesn't quite believe Jamie's protestations of innocence, but he lets him go anyway, so Jamie returns to his hometown in order to investigate a local legend about 1940s ventriloquist Mary Shaw.

There are several problems with "Dead Silence". The first is that it simply isn't scary enough - previous dummy-related horror movies ("Dead of Night", "Magic" etc) have focussed on the weird relationship between the ventriloquist and the dummy, whereas in "Dead Silence" it's simply used as a creepy object and could just as easily have been a clown doll. Similarly, there are several lengthy and tedious sequences where Jamie just walks around a house during a thunderstorm and nothing scary happens. It also doesn't help that Kwanten makes a bland and uninspiring lead.

There's decent support from Bob Gunton and Amber Valletta (as Jamie's crippled father and his young wife) but some of the other actors are embarrassingly bad. That said, the film partially redeems itself with a ridiculous, yet grotesquely amusing final twist, but for the most part it's a boring, badly conceived and poorly directed mess. If it's ventriloquism-related scares you're after, watch Anthony Hopkins in "Magic" instead.