Dead Silence
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Dead Silence | |
|---|---|
 Promotional movie poster for the film |
|
| Directed by | James Wan |
| Produced by | Mark Burg Gregg Hoffman Oren Koules |
| Written by | Leigh Whannell |
| Starring | Ryan Kwanten Donnie Wahlberg Amber Valletta Bob Gunton Michael Fairman Judith Roberts |
| Music by | Charlie Clouser |
| Cinematography | John R. Leonetti |
| Editing by | Michael Knue |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) | March 16th, 2007 (USA), July 6th, 2007 (UK) |
| Running time | 91 mins |
| Country | United States  |
| Budget | $20 million (estimated) |
| Followed by | Dead Silence II |
| Official website | |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Dead Silence (originally titled Shhhh... and Silence, with alternate title suggestions such as The Doll and Mary Shaw[1]) is a 2007 horror film from the creators of Saw, James Wan and Leigh Whannell. The film stars Ryan Kwanten as the main protagonist Jamie Ashen, Donnie Wahlberg as Detective Jim Lipton, and Judith Roberts as Mary Shaw. It was released nationwide on March 16th, 2007, and was released on DVD and HD DVD on June 26, 2007. There are two versions of the movie: the edited, R rated movie, and an uncut version. The movie took 6 months and 17 days to film.
Taglines:
- You scream, you die.
- Just because it's not alive doesn't mean it's dead.
- What did you find?
Contents |
[edit] Plot
After he receives a mysterious puppet in the mail, Jamie Ashen believes there is something strange about it. When he leaves his apartment to pick up his dinner, his wife, Lisa, sets up the puppet to scare him. However, with everything in the apartment going silent, she is attacked. As Jamie returns to the apartment, he hears Lisa calling out to him, but soon discovers her dead with her tongue ripped out of her mouth. Though Detective Jim Lipton suspects Jamie of the murder, he is allowed to leave with no evidence against him. Jamie returns to his apartment and discovers the puppet, named Billy (a reference to the puppet used in the Saw series, who has a cameo later in the film), belonged to Mary Shaw from his home origin town of Ravens Fair.
Returning to the town for Lisa's funeral, he first confronts his estranged father about Mary Shaw. Although he doesn't get any answers, his father and new wife, Ella, remind him of the children's poem regarding Shaw and her penchant of cutting out her victims' tongues. After Lisa's funeral, Jamie wanders into an old cemetery where he finds Shaw's grave and those of her puppets. He is warned by the mortician's wife of the danger of Shaw's puppets, and realizes he should rebury Billy. He does so, only to find the puppet back with him the next morning, accompanied by Detective Lipton, still not convinced of Jamie's innocence. Stealing Billy from the detective, he brings the puppet to the mortician, Henry, who finally tells him the tale of Mary Shaw.
Shaw was a ventriloquist whose ambition was to make the perfect puppet. She was famous in the town and performed shows at the Guignol Theater (a reference to the Grand Guignol, the legendary shock-theater Paris playhouse). One night, however, a young boy named Michael Ashen heckled her, claiming that he could see Mary's lips moving. Mary quickly rebuffed this by having herself and Billy talk at the same time, wowing the entire audience. Michael went missing shortly thereafter, and though his body was never found, Shaw was blamed, hunted down, and killed by the vengeful Ashen clan, who cut her tongue out in the process. With her last wishes to have her body turned into a ventriloquist puppet in death and to be buried with her 101 puppets, Henry, a young boy at the time, saw her corpse in his father's mortuary, though he had covered his mouth to keep from screaming.
Deciding to investigate the theater, Jamie finds Shaw's dressing room. There he discovers an old book of hers with her plans to make the perfect puppet. Unbeknownst to him, though, her ghost stalks him throughout the theater. Confronting his father later, Jamie is told that Michael was his great-uncle. Convinced that Shaw had murdered him, his family and others were the ones to kill her. Soon after her death, however, Ashen family members would be found dead with their tongues ripped out of their mouths and posed in a macabre family picture. With this pattern continuing with children and grandchildren Jamie was sent from the town to try to stop the curse. When the detective arrives to the house with news that all of Shaw's puppets had been exhumed and were missing, Jamie receives a phone call from Henry, who, unknown to Jamie, had already been killed by Mary Shaw, calling him back to the theater.
With the detective following close behind, Jamie returns to the theater and Shaw's living quarters. Discovering a cleverly hidden back room that Jamie didn't investigate the first time, they find the body of Michael Ashen, strung like a marionette and 100 of Shaw's puppets placed in cases upon the wall. With most of the noises going quiet, the puppets suddenly begin to look to their left. Finding a clown-like Dummy, Cornelius, rocking in a chair, he begins to speak to them, who reveals the gruesome truth of why Jamie's wife was targeted; she was pregnant with the last member of the Ashen line. They realize that the puppets are alive, and begin to destroy them. Setting the room on fire, they run trying to escape. When the catwalk along which they are running collapses, Detective Lipton involuntarily screams and is killed in mid-fall by Shaw. Jamie, however, is sent plunging into the water below the theater and escapes.
Jamie realizes that Billy is the only remaining puppet, and that the only way to rid the town of Shaw is to destroy him. He goes to the mortician with whom he had left Billy, only to discover that the mortician was dead, his tongue ripped out. After his wife, Marion, tells Jamie that Jamie's father took the doll (which seems impossible since he is an invalid), he returns to his father's house to destroy Billy. As he arrives, Mary Shaw reappears, but is forced to retreat when Jamie throws Billy into the fireplace. As she is forced back into the shadows, Jamie finds his wheelchair-bound father sitting, staring blankly into space. As he approaches him, Jamie is horrified to find that his father is dead, his entire back removed, hollowed out and replaced with a wooden shaft used in ventriloquist dummies. As Jamie realizes that his young stepmother was always at his father's side, she suddenly appears next to him. He realizes that Ella is the perfect puppet that Shaw strove to make, and had been using the elder Ashen's corpse as a puppet to lure Jamie. Ella heckles Jamie and lightning flashes in the sky briefly showing the ghostly Mary Shaw behind her disguise, finally killing Jamie as he screams. Mary Shaw shows her puppet book with pictures of Jamie, Detective Lipton, Edward, Lisa, Michael and Henry as dolls. Jamie recites the poem in his head and when he is done, Mary Shaw closes the book to end the movie.
[edit] Cast and crew
[edit] Production team
- James Wan: writer, director
- Leigh Whannell: writer
- Scott Stuber: executive producer
- Mark Burg: producer
- Gregg Hoffman: producer
- Oren Koules: producer
[edit] Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Ryan Kwanten | Jamie Ashen |
| Donnie Wahlberg | Detective Jim Lipton |
| Judith Roberts | Mary Shaw |
| Michael Fairman | Henry Walker |
| Joan Heney | Marion Walker |
| Bob Gunton | Edward Ashen |
| Amber Valletta | Ella Ashen |
| Laura Regan | Lisa Ashen |
| Steven Taylor | Michael Ashen |
[edit] Poem
The poem used in the movie;
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
[edit] Box Office
Dead Silence did not perform as well as projected at the box office. Despite mixed reviews and a wide release, it has only made around $16.5M domestically as of April 16, 2007 (according to Box Office Mojo). It was pulled from most theaters just 16 days after release. Its estimated production budget was $20M. As of March 10, 2008, it has made $20,861,015 worldwide,[2] with most of Europe yet to open the film.
[edit] Sequel
A sequel was talked about, and it was tentatively scheduled for a 2010 release. However, the sequel was never talked about again. There has still been no more information on the proposed sequel.
[edit] Alternate footage
- Many alternate scenes were released on the unrated DVD, depicting Mary Shaw with a long, slimy tongue, made of numerous tongues from her victims. In the scenes, she uses her tongue to frighten her victims, making it slither from her mouth (and lick Jamie's cheek in one scene). Along with the tongues of her victims, Mary acquires their voice as well.
- In an alternate ending, Ella simply knocks Jamie out after he discovers his father was a puppet all along. Then, she explains that the original Ella was a human being with Edward as an abusive husband. Edward knocked her down the stairs, and killed her unborn child. Ella dug up the grave where the puppet Billy was buried, and became possessed by Mary Shaw. Afterwards, Ella makes a family photograph, and then, dressed as Mary Shaw, tells a bedtime story to a child by candlelight, later revealed to be Jamie with his tongue ripped out (or would have been had they added the visual effect planned). This story is the poem. Ella also reveals that only silence can save you from Mary Shaw. Then she blows out the candle, ending the movie.
[edit] Trivia
- In a scene towards the end of the film when Jamie and Detective Lipton are walking through Mary Shaw's room containing all the dolls, one of the dolls lying on the ground is Billy the Puppet(a.k.a Jigsaw) from the Saw franchise films which James Wan and Leigh Whannell also directed and created.[3]
- A digitally modified Palais Theatre makes a cameo as the abandoned and haunted "Theatre at Lost Lake", featuring the top of the building and its towers.[citation needed]
- At Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights 2007, there was a Haunted House based on the film titled Dead Silence: The Curse of Mary Shaw
- Actor Donnie Wahlberg, who played Detective Lipton in the movie, also plays Detective Eric Matthews in several of the Saw films.
