Tweet
Released by: Shout! Factory
Released on: March 28th, 2022.
Director: James Wan
Cast: Ryan Kwanten, Amber Valletta, Donnie Wahlberg, Henry Walker, Laura Regan
Year: 2007
Purchase From Amazon
Dead Silence – Movie Review:
Made for Universal Studios after the success of their 2004 film Saw for Lionsgate, director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell’s 20007 picture, Dead Silence, begins in the apartment of Jamie Ashen (Ryan Kwanten) and his wife Lisa (Laura Regan). He’s trying to fix the sink and she’s hungry, so she sends him out for Chinese food but not before a strange package containing a large ventriloquist’s dummy shows up at their door. While he’s out getting the food, she puzzlingly puts the dummy into bed and covers it with a blanket – and then something happens. As she leaves the room she’s pulled from behind and dragged back in. When Jamie comes home, he finds her dead with her face contorted and her tongue cut out.
Of course, the cops, led by Detective Lipton (Donnie Wahlberg), think that Jamie did it - at the very least he was the last one to see her alive and his story about a killer ventriloquist's dummy does seem a little farfetched. But they don't take him into custody and so he splits to his home town of Raven's Fair where an urban legend about a wronged ventriloquist named Mary Shaw (Judith Roberts) who died decades ago that he was told as a kid may hold the clue to Lisa's death.
After a visit to the father he hasn’t seen in years (Bob Gunton), where he meets his beautiful and much younger stepmother, Ella (Amber Valetta), for the first time, he starts digging around for clues with the help of the town coroner, Henry Walker (Michael Fairman). Lipton shows up in Raven’s Fair, wondering why Jamie left with the dummy, and what’s really going on here as people start seeing Mary Shaw and turning up dead with their tongues torn out.
Dead Silence is a mixed bag. The on the plus side, we have a really good looking movie with loads of atmosphere and some genuinely eerie dummies populating the second half of the movie, a good score, and some decent performances. On the negative side, the story is pretty messy in spots, suffering from some pretty obvious logic gaps, and it tends to be fairly predictable and, ultimately, just as reliant on clichéd jump scares as in building actual suspense. The end result is uneven, to be sure, and more than a little messy, but entreating enough if you’re in a less discerning mood. You’ll frequently question why characters do what they do in this movie, why seemingly everyone always has a shovel on hand and why, when provided with evidence that would go a long way towards making his case that the killer dummy theory isn’t just hot air, Jamie doesn’t do anything with it. You’ll wonder why, at times, it feels modern and then why it feels Victorian (and not just in the flashback scenes where it does sort of make sense). If you think about things too much, Dead Silent falls apart pretty quickly – but it’s easy enough to turn your brain off and appreciate the visuals.
Ryan Kwanten makes for a likeable enough lead, he handles his role without any problems even if he is a bit on the generic side. Donny Wahlberg seems to be having a lot of fun as the cop in the movie, chewing a bit of scenery here and there and proving to be pretty entertaining to watch. Judith Roberts, whose role is light on dialogue, looks pretty cool as the film’s main villain, while the supporting players are all okay – not amazing, not terrible – just okay.
The real star of the movie is the damn ventriloquist dummy. This thing, and its many siblings, is authentically creepy and it moves in a way that is wholly unnatural and yet completely fitting in the context of the story. When the dummy is on screen, even when it’s just lying there completely still, the movie does have a sense of eeriness to it.
Dead Silence – UHD/Blu-ray Review:
Dead Silence arrives on UHD from Shout! Factory in an HVEC encoded 2160p transfer taken from a new 4k 2023 master of the theatrical cut and framed at 2.39.1 widescreen with HDR10 and Dolby Vision enhancement. The movie was shot on 35mm but created in 2k on a Digital Intermediate, so this is probably up-ressed but the picture quality is pretty strong and the UHD does show more depth and detail and feature better compression than the included Blu-ray disc, which also looks very good by the standards of a 1080p presentation. This is a very dark movie in terms of lightning and color scheme, much of it takes place at night and in dimly lit interiors and there is often times and intentional blue tint to the visuals, but the transfer handles all of this well and we wind up with a good looking picture. Detail can be pretty impressive at times and skin tones look good. There isn’t a speck of print damage to not, the image is spotless, and there are no problems with any compression artifacts, noise reduction or edge enhancement issues.
The English language 24-bit DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mix on this disc sounds really good. An optional 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Stereo track, also in English, is also included on the disc. Optional subtitles are provided in English only. While it would have been keen to get a TrueHD or Atmos mix here, the DTS-HD 5.1 track included is a very good one. There’s a lot of impressive channel separation and lots of rear channel activity to keep the mix engrossing. Bass response is strong and tight but mixed properly to ensure that it doesn’t bury the dialogue. The score has some impressive depth to it and the performers are always easy to understand and follow. No complaints, really, the audio here is really solid.
The first disc, which contains the 4k presentation of the theatrical cut, contains no extra features but the second disc, which is a Blu-ray and not a UHD, and which includes both the 1:29:08 theatrical cut of the movie and the slightly longer 1:31:33 unrated cut of the film, which has some different effects work and a noticeably gorier death for one key character.
Shout! Factory has provided a few new featurettes here, the first of which is Masters Of Puppets, an interview with director James Wan running sixteen minutes. Here, Wan goes over his affinity for ghost stories and how he's used them for inspiration over the years, getting into filmmaking, using sound and animation in a big way in Dead Silence, the influence of Sam Raimi on his work, working with Leigh Whannell, getting freaked out by dolls in his younger days, wanting to break out from just being known as "the Saw guy," the very deliberate look of the movie and why cinema is all about creating an experience.
Dead Assignment is a new an interview with writer Leigh Whannell that runs twelve minutes. In this piece, Whannell talks about getting obsessed with genre films at a young age and learning about movies from his local video store, going to film school and learning about the techniques needed to make a good movie, meeting and bonding with James Wan, creating Saw with Wan, how Dead Silence was fairly rushed compared to Saw, why dolls are inherently creepy, ideas for the movie that were changed for the final version, how he feels the movie is a messy hodgepodge of ideas and how the movie has developed a fan base over the years.
The last new featurette is No Children, Only Dolls, an interview with ventriloquist dummy creator Tim Selberg running twelve minutes. Here we learn about where some of the ideas for the visuals came from, how he came to be fascinated with ventriloquist dummies as a young kid, making his own dummies over the years and what that entailed and how he became a woodcarver by trade. He also talks about what goes into making the facial expressions on a dummy right, the importance of getting the paint job right and some of the mechanics that allow the dummies he makes to move the way they do.
Carried over from the previous Blu-ray release is a two minute alternate opening, a four minute alternate ending and four minutes of deleted scenes. The disc also carries over a few shorter archival featurettes such as the twelve minute EPK style The Making Of Dead Silence featurette, which goes over the making of the movie and some of its visuals, the seven minute Mary Shaw’s Secrets featurette which covers the backstory that gave birth to the main plotline, the four minute Evolution Of A Visual Effect featurette which goes over how digital and practical effects were used in the movie, and finally, the movie’s original trailer.
Menus and chapter stops are provided on both discs and this release also comes packaged with a slipcover for its first pressing.
Dead Silence - The Final Word:
Dead Silence has its problems but it’s stylish and loaded with atmosphere and creepy dolls. Fans of the movie will appreciate the 4k upgrade that this package offers as well as the new extra features, which prove to be quite interesting.