DEAD SILENCE

    Dead Silence sets its aim high, especially for a recent movie.  The filmmakers clearly wanted to tell an original story, not something re-hashed from bits and pieces of other plots.  They wanted the characters to be more than obnoxious people having lame conversations and casual sex before dying.
Dead Silence also tried to blend a rather subtle, ghostly, haunted house atmosphere with a scattering of violence severe enough to give the movie an R rating, and an optional Unrated version.

    This is asking a lot—making a blend like that.  But Dead Silence achieves many of its goals. It wasn’t a big box-office hit, although it didn’t bomb either.  Still, this lack of success is saddening,
considering how many uninspired sequels…and even Parts #3-4’s to various routine stuff are being made recently.

    What are some of the major goals that Dead Silence succeeds at?  Let’s go through some.  Story.  Characters.  The swings in
atmosphere mentioned previously.  Then the acting. Ryan Kwanten, the Australian actor playing the hero Jamie, never overdoes it.  Yet his love for his wife and his unwavering search to bring her killer to justice give him courage which shows in all his scenes.  In just a few minutes near the beginning of Dead Silence, you get a sense of two people (Jamie and wife Lisa) who have truly bonded.

Miles away, many years later, the curse still reaches Jamie and Lisa

     After her death, Jamie is willing to go straight into Hell for answers, whatever his journey may bring.  (A good example: the scene where the clown says to him, “Come closer…”)

     Jamie and his wife Lisa had found a dummy delivered to their apartment.  No return address. Thinking nothing of it, Jamie goes downstairs for take-out food.  When he gets back, Lisa is dead.   And suddenly Jamie is convinced the dummy killed her.

    Dummies started showing up in movies at least as far back as Dead of Night (1945), possibly earlier than that.  Even Anthony Hopkins, more than 30 years before taking on Dr. Hannibal Lecter, made a movie with a dummy, Magic.  Fortunately, Dead Silence is not a slow build-upleading to a dummy gradually taking over someone’s mind, with one person after another telling that same character, “Oh… you’re just letting your imagination get the best of you…”

    Jamie returns to his home town, Raven’s Fair, a small, quiet, isolated place.  Years ago it was prosperous, now it is rundown for the most part.  He already has a good idea of what and who he is looking for.  As a kid, he and his friends had heard stories and scary rhymes about a lady named Mary Shaw.  Jamie believes there is a connection between her and the dummy that killed his wife.

    Mary Shaw, a resident of Raven’s Fair, had disappeared years before, but she had been famous in the town for her dummies and dolls.

     For years now, Jamie had been out of touch with anyone in the town.  He never got along with his father, had no idea that his father had remarried. (Bob Gunton, so powerful in The Shawshank Redemption as the corrupt warden, is effective as
the father.)  His new wife, much younger than Jamie’s dad, hardly mentions Jamie’s grief, and generally seems a little too friendly to him.

    Mary Shaw’s memory still holds a power in this town, especially for the undertaker and his wife.  As frightened as the undertaker is, his wife is much worse—talking to herself, or to someone else only she can see… hiding from time to time in the crawlspace and basement.

   A New York City detective (Donnie Wahlberg) has followed Jamie to Raven’s Fair.  He doesn’t have enough evidence to arrest him yet but he is sure Jamie committed the murder.  He also doesn’t want Jamie to bury the dummy. (Something  the undertaker’s wife tells Jamie he must do.)

Jamie–Lisa’s death makes him follow the clues, even if he
must die to do it

     At last, the undertaker is willing to reveal what he knows about Mary Shaw.  His story is similar to what Jamie remembers hearing as a boy.  Mary lived alone with her dolls and dummies, and was a skilled ventriloquist. Occasionally she did an act at a stately theater located on a lake.

    But there is more.  The undertaker still has intense memories of the last show that Mary did.  He was a sensitive young boy then, very polite, very respectful.

    But another boy at that show was the opposite—rude and disrespectful.  This boy criticized Mary’s skill (he yelled out he saw her lips move while she did her act).  Not long after, the same boy disappeared and was never seen again.  Then several others from Raven’s Fair disappeared too.  Shortly after, Mary  disappeared.  Later, you learn that it wasn’t the boy’s rudeness so much that angered Mary.  It was his suggesting that her dummy Billy wasn’t real.

     Some of the plotting seems a little far-fetched.  You generally didn’t see that much rudeness in small-town America at that time, except where people had big class differences.  Another thing; after all these disappearances in Raven’s Fair, wouldn’t the FBI or at least the state police be called in?

    But as unlikely as you would expect, two scenes here are the strongest in the movie.  First the undertaker’s memories of going down to his father’s workroom to get another look at the dead Mary (his father was also an undertaker). Second, the old photos of Mary’s victims seated grotesquely next to each other, their mouths mutilated.

    The undertaker is afraid to help Jamie more than this.  Jamie goes to what is left of the theater where Mary did her last show, and to Mary’s home near-by.  Here he finds some of her  sketchbooks, featuring designs for more realistic dummies (very creepy, although the pages look way too clean, considering  their age).  Jamie’s father also fills in some of the story from years ago.   The rude kid at the show was Michael Ashen,  Jamie’s great-uncle.
Jamie’s family and their friends killed Mary Shaw.

Mary and one of her children 

   Plenty more plot twists and turns are still to come.  But
perhaps the most frightening scene is only a brief suggestion;
that Michael was not killed right away, but slowly turned into a
doll by Mary.

   Again, it is sad that Dead Silence did not do better in theaters (I need to check out how the video has done).  Meanwhile, the same director’s Saw, a much cruder, less imaginative movie, has already been followed by one sequel after the next.  I found it original, but not much more than that.  I’m thinking I need to watch it again, and then figure out if I missed something.