Dead Silence (HD DVD)

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The creators of "Saw" team up to bring horror to the screen outside of their tremendously popular trilogy and re-team with former New Kids on the Block singer Donnie Wahlberg in doing so. This time, the killer does not focus on conjuring up deadly games to terrorize and ultimately kill the victims. This time around, a ventriloquist dummy haunts and murders the victims in a grizzly manner and an entire town fearing the curse of a murdered ventriloquist named Mary Shaw. While Leigh Whannell and James Wan have woven intricate and mesmerizing tales through their highly coveted "Saw" franchise, this new thread of terror never matches up in storytelling or frights.

Jamie Ashen (Ryan Kwanten) comes home one night to find his wife Lisa (Laura Regan) brutally murdered and physically mutilated by having her tongue ripped out and her face left in a grotesque look of immense terror. The brutal murder finds only Jamie as a principal suspect and Detective Jim Lipton (Wahlberg) must gather enough clues to put Jamie behind bars. The story becomes even more intriguing and unusual when the ventriloquist dummy that was anonymously shipped to Jamie´s house unravels clues to the mystery that leads Jamie and Lipton to Jamie´s hometown of Ravens Fair; where they search for answers and try to find truth in an old child´s story about an old woman named Mary Shaw, who had her dummies buried with her and would kill anybody she would hear scream.

Aside from the early death of Lisa in the early moments of the film, "Dead Silence" stops the blood shedding until the film´s third and final act, when a couple people come face to face with the curse of Mary Shaw. A lot of time is spent with Jamie asking the townsfolk about the legend of Mary Shaw and Lipton either shaving with an electric razor or disbelieving anything said by Jamie. The eccentric father and his new wife add seemingly unnecessary plot points to the story and these characters serve as a possible McGuffin for much of the film. When the third act begins, more people finally begin to die and the slow moving story begins to speed towards the climactic moment when Whannell and Wan spin a few plot twists and final reward the viewers with something of interest – the last reveal.

Before the final villain is revealed and the trudging plot concludes, "Dead Silence" best used its title to describe my level of excitement. The film completely failed in delivering any spooks or through provoking moments that the "Saw" trilogy is more than capable of delivering. The little Mary Shaw rhyme become old and tired after the umpteenth repetition of its words. The ventriloquist dummy that appeared in a few scenes was a gimmick that no longer worked after poor Lisa had her tongue ripped out. Perhaps the reason for this was the complete lack of a body count during most of the film. Or, perhaps the complete lack of anything scary during this same amount of time. Credit must be given to the final reveal and its ingenuity that allowed myself to reflect on the film I had scene and feel a little better about the ninety one minutes I had spent watching "Dead Silence."

Donnie Wahlberg is a decent character actor and his gritty performances have often been overshadowed by his more famous younger brother Mark. He specializes in portraying a detective that is not completely together and has a hint of a dark side and his role as Lipton is handled nicely by the former singer. Ryan Kwanten and the remaining members of the cast struggled to keep the film interesting. Kwanten seemed like a last minute replacement for another "Saw" alumni, Cary Elwes. With nobody in the film giving a particularly interesting performance, "Dead Silence" did not benefit from the casting decisions. The slow story and uninteresting performances kept "Dead Silence" from rising above mundane and boredom.

Video:
For those familiar with the desaturated hues and overly dark look of the "Saw" films, "Dead Silence" haunts familiar ground. Colors are again altered to allow the film´s red hues to stand out and everything else fades into a cold and murky presentation. The 2.35:1 widescreen film is mastered with the VC-1 codec, a staple of Universal releases. The level of detail is perfectly fine, but often lost in the overly dark and color removed visuals. Shadow detail is not too shabby, but there are a few scenes when the colors and shadows create very flat imagery. The source materials used in "Dead Silence" are good, with only minimal amounts of film grain present. There are a few scenes in the film that look very good and are quite pleasing, but much of this film feels like an average high definition transfer and with not much interesting going on the screen, it is visually not very pleasing.