Director: James Wan
Cast: Ryan Kwanten, Amber Valletta, Donnie Wahlberg, Bob Gunton
RunTime: 90 mins
Genre: Horror
Rating: PG (Some disturbing scenes)

Beware the stare of Mary Shaw
She had no children, only dolls
And if you see her in your dreams
Be sure you never, ever scream

From the makers of Saw comes this horror story about a ventriloquist who wants to make a perfect doll. Set in a creepy little town, murderous dolls and dummies somehow have the ability to make audience scream. Think Chucky.

Ironically, the cinema was as what the movie suggests, in dead silence. About a newly wed whose blissful married life ended when a ventriloquist’s dummy silenced the wife dead, the rest of the story falls into a bottomless pit of loopholes.

The husband brings the eerie dummy his hometown to find out about the mystery about his wife’s brutal death. (Now, how, how silly can this get? I would have burnt it.) Her death is somehow linked to an old childhood poem, a burnt down theatre house, and his deranged father. With more sophisticated audience, the whole premise feels like it’s ‘been-there-done-that’.

Without gory scenes, this movie attempts to return to the basics with old-fashioned scare tactics. It does manage to create the creepy mood and dated look rather well. However, many times audience was expecting something to happen, which did not quite realise.

Sex symbol Ryan Kwanten keeps his shirt, but wife loses her tongue, and police detective Donnie Wahlberg (yes, his brother is Mark) loses credibility, their bland performances seems slightly better than the doll’s. With an interesting twist at the bad, the story unfortunately ends in a dead fashion.

Dead Silence – In Dead Fashion