Dead Silence

The first trip outside of the SAW world by James Wan and Leigh Whannell, focuses on a ghost story about a ventriloquist, whos dummies may or may not be alive, murdering people and ripping tongues out if they scream.

The movie had some cool visuals, the dummies are creepy, and Mary Shaw herself is a decent enough villain. I heard a reference to her as "Freddy Kruger with tits" and I guess you could say thats true.

Anyways, as I said, the dummies are creepy, and the main one, Billy, is used pretty good. The acting and the story is pretty one dimensional. What you see is what you get as far as, "My wife was murdered, and I want to find out what the dolls had to do with it" and thats that.

Donnie Wahlberg is a cop in this one, just like Saw 2, but he was able to be funny in this one as opposed to completely pissed off. The sets were nice, characters were pretty eh, and the stupid poem they keep reciting was just that, stupid.

As far as gore goes, there isn't that much in the movie, aside from a few tongues ripped out with minimal blood, so it is weird that the movie got an R rating, when it could've been easily a PG-13. There was barely any bad language in it either, and no tits.

Usually, with a PG-13 horror flick, you are expecting a dissapointment, but since this was an R, I was expecting buckets of blood, murderous dummies, and tits being chopped off and put in hamburger buns for everybody. Instead we get an alright story, with some legitimate creepy moments, and a twist I wasn't really expecting. I liked the twist by the way, I thought it was pretty cool.

For me personally, the best element of the movie was the music, and then when something bad is going to happen, the lack thereof. First off, the opening credits start off strongly with blueprints for making the dolls, and Charlie Clouser, who scored the Saw movies, strikes hard again with a solid opening theme that reappears throughout the movie. Then when something bad is going to happen, instead of going for the cheap suspense music, everything goes silent, which fits with the movies title.

Final say, I will give it a 3 out of 5 because I liked it, didn't love it. I think after the opening situation with the initial murder, the movie drags on without anything really good happening till almost the end. If they padded the middle with some more meat to work with, it would've been bumped up for me, but it really just took too long.

Best cameo appearance, the dolls from Saw is sitting on the floor near the end.