Dead Silence

Review in a Hurry:  Ghost of evil ventriloquist (stop laughing!) and her army of wooden dolls wreak vengeance on...oh, who cares.

The Bigger Picture:  The creators of the Saw franchise attempt to expand their horror empire with this ill-conceived, poorly executed ghost story. In what might as well now be Boilerplate Supernatural Villain Origin Number Three, demented ventriloquist Mary Shaw is deemed a threat to her community, executed by an angry mob (note to propmaster: Where were the pitchforks?), only to return as a monster with the power to rip your tongue out if you scream in her presence.

Or yawn. She's probably not picky.

The dolls of Dead Silence won't make you want to scream. The characters are another matter, as they all appear to have flunked not only Horror Survival 101 but Doing Things That Make Sense 205 and maybe Crossing the Street Without Getting Hit by a Bus (Remedial).

Once it becomes apparent that the evil dolls aren't going to do much of anything but flicking their eyes around and looking shifty, it's obvious that Dead Silence is only going to be good for a laugh. But apart from Donnie Wahlberg, who appears to have realized what he's gotten himself into halfway through and decided to lighten things up, the cast isn't much help.

This movie has all the hallmarks of a spoof: actors as wooden as their pine-forged nemeses and a plot that just might have been an acceptable pitch for an episode of Scooby-Doo. But Dead Silence is clearly the film that James Wan and Leigh Wannell set out to make; since it's not a very good one, they're the real sinister dummies here.

The 180—a Second Opinion:  There are some nifty atmospherics in the ghost scenes, and the people who did the sound design and mixing deserve some (grudging) props. And if you don't mind the dummies barely animate nature, they certainly do look creepy enough.