Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that this horror movie shows grotesque image of corpses with mouths open and tongues torn out. The violence is shown in quick, nightmarish flashes (it's a ghostly curse doing it, after all, not human handiwork), and is very intense. A young boy is prominent among victims. Other imagery plays on people's worst fears of creepy ventriloquist dummies, dolls, mannequins, marionettes, and clowns -- this could definitely give smaller kids and other sensitive viewers nightmares.
Families can talk about the movie's retro horror style with the use of dry-ice fog, nearly black-and-white cinematography, the exaggerated cop character -- even the absence of swearing and sex in the film. Ask your kids why they think the filmmakers decided to hearken back to this more innocent era? How does the movie compare to old Universal Pictures horror movies with Frankenstein's monster, the Wolf Man, Dracula, and others? Why are people creeped out (or not) by dummies and dolls?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Charles Cassady, Jr.
Filmmakers behind the grisly hit Saw and its sequels also made DEAD SILENCE, so-so shockery about a murderous ghost who uses ventriloquist dummies to carry out her revenge.
Even with intense scenes of hideous corpses, the violence isn't as nasty as Saw's sadistic torture. Expect gruesome makeup effects and digital hauntings in an otherwise old-school chiller, complete with smoke-machine fog and cobwebs that look like they came straight from a magic shop. Even the Universal Pictures logo at the beginning of this is the black-and-white antique one, not the modern version.
If your teens are already watching and loving horror movies, Dead Silence is probably OK for them. The big question is whether horror-hardened youth will forgive a fairly predictable "trick" ending. Not to mention a ghost who's an obvious takeoff on the more interesting dream-haunting demon Freddy Krueger.
Dead Silence begins with a young wife's horrifying murder with her tongue torn out. Slovenly police detective Lipton (Donnie Wahlberg) immediately suspects the husband, Jamie (Ryan Kwanten), of the crime, mocking the young man's story that back in the town of Raven's Fair, where the couple grew up, there was a legend of a twisted lady ventriloquist named Mary Shaw. Her ghost supposedly pulls your tongue out if you scream when you see her in a nightmare. And Jamie and his wife had just received a mysterious package from Raven's Fair containing an antique dummy.
To both prove his innocence and bury his late spouse, Jamie goes back to Raven's Fair, a community that looks like sprawling ruin. This blight, he's told, is the result of undead Mary Shaw slaughtering whole families over the decades (you'd think law enforcement might have noticed such atrocities, but apparently not). Jamie tries to break the curse by burying the dummy in the cemetery with Mary Shaw, but it's not that simple.
Some of the scary stuff is just fleeting glimpses of Mary's ghost, reflected in a mirror or in deep shadow. Dead Silence actually gets less frightening when the filmmakers apply the fancy CGI special-effects or reveal Mary Shaw in full. It's far more ominous just to show the dummy's staring eyes or grinning face suddenly turned in a different position than the last shot.
Though customarily comical (as with the great Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy), ventriloquist dummies have been used to generate shudders in movies and on TV (The Twilight Zone) since Hollywood's golden era. You can ask children why they think dummies are so unnerving. For horror-fan kids who like (or disliked) Dead Silence, you can turn them onto the concluding episode of the classic 1945 British horror anthology Dead of Night, starring Michael Redgrave as a ventriloquist obsessed with his little wooden partner. For younger kids there's also the "Night of the Living Dummy" installments of the popular Goosebumps video series.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentSome very mild innuendo between young marrieds. |
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ViolenceVictims of the ghost have their tongues torn out -- though the gory deed happens in "supernatural" bursts of speed, so (usually) the worst we see are quick glimpses of the ghastly corpses that result. One victim vomits up blood. Others fall from great heights through floorboards. There is a quick-cut of a lynch mob about to kill and mutilate a woman with a razor. Dead bodies include children. |
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Language"Hell," "ass," and the very beginning of an F-word. |
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Social BehaviorNone of the characters are terribly well developed, but the main character is evidently a good husband trying to get justice for his slain wife. His good intentions don't prevent a downbeat fate. His aged, invalid father has married repeatedly, lately settling (apparently) for much younger bride. |
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CommercialismNone, except a quick inside-joke reference to the Saw movies. |
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