Dead Silence

Jamie Ashen and his wife Lisa receive an anonymous gift of a ventriloquist doll called "Billy". When Jamie goes out, a figure kills Lisa. Jamie returns to find that her tongue has been cut off; he is arrested for presumably killing her. After Jamie is released by police detective Jim Lipton due to lack of evidence, he spots inside Billy's box a mysterious message about "Mary Shaw", a deceased ventriloquist from his hometown, Raven's Fair. Returning to Raven's Fair, now old and rundown, Jamie visits his estranged, wheelchair-bound father Edward, and his much-younger wife, Ella. He arranges for Lisa's funeral with the help of local mortician Henry Walker. Henry's senile wife, Marion, urges him to bury Billy. Jamie does so but is confronted by Lipton, who followed Jamie and finds his actions suspicious.

Henry explains that Mary Shaw was publicly humiliated when a young boy named Michael rudely claimed that he could see her lips moving during one of her performances. Some weeks later, Michael disappeared, and his family blamed it on Mary and lynched her. Mary's last wish was to have her body turned into a doll and buried with her collection of dolls, who she called her children. Henry, then a child, saw Shaw (after she was turned into a dummy) rise up, but was spared thanks to his silence, because Mary only kills those who scream when exposed to her true appearance. Jamie finds out that Michael, who actually was murdered by Mary Shaw, was his great-uncle. The Ashen family forced Mary to scream and silenced her by cutting her tongue out; she has since been seeking revenge against their bloodline by killing them the same way.

Mary Shaw kills Henry and Lipton discovers that all of her dolls have been dug up. At Shaw's old theater, Jamie and Lipton discover 100 of the dolls in their display case, along with Michael's body, which had been turned into a marionette. Mary's ghost reveals that she killed Lisa because she was pregnant with his child, thereby killing any potential newborn of the Ashen family. Jamie and Lipton start a fire to destroy the dolls, but Lipton trips and screams, sealing his fate. Back at his father's residence, Jamie is confronted by Mary, but repels her by throwing Billy into the fireplace. He learns, much to his horror, that his father is already dead; the current "Edward" he has been interacting with all this time is a doll converted from his corpse; his voice was provided by Ella, the "perfect doll" that Mary Shaw created before her death. Jamie screams as Ella becomes possessed by Mary; he suffers the same fate as everyone else.

Jamie, now a puppet, recites a nursery rhyme about Shaw while a photo album with other human puppets is shown: Lisa, Henry, Lipton, Edward, Ella, and Jamie himself. Mary closes the book, finally completing her revenge.

• Ryan Kwanten as Jamie Ashen
• Amber Valletta as Ella Ashen
• Donnie Wahlberg as Detective Jim Lipton
• Bob Gunton as Edward Ashen
• Michael Fairman as Henry Walker
  • Keir Gilchrist as Young Henry Walker
• Joan Heney as Marion Walker
• Laura Regan as Lisa Ashen
• Judith Roberts as Mary Shaw
• Steven Taylor as Michael Ashen
• Dmitry Chepovetsky as Richard Walker
• Shelley Peterson as Lisa's Mom
• Enn Reitel as Billy (voice)
• Fred Tatasciore as the Clown Doll (voice)
• Julian Richings as Boz (uncredited and deleted scenes)

Filming took place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.[2] The setting for the film's story, the non-fictional suburb of "Raven's Fair," is situated at Badley Bridge and goes by the name "Raven's Fair Town Sign".[3]

Dead Silence was released in the United States on March 16, 2007.[4]

Lakeshore Records released the soundtrack of Dead Silence on March 20, 2007. The CD contains 31 tracks, the first track being the song "We Sleep Forever" performed by American rock band Aiden (despite not actually being featured in the film itself). The rest of the CD is taken up by Charlie Clouser's film score. Clouser has worked on many film scores, such as the Saw series and Resident Evil: Extinction.

Track listing

1. "We Sleep Forever" – Aiden
2. "Main Titles" [2:56]
3. "Sheet" [1:08]
4. "Blood" [1:41]
5. "Apartment" [1:28]
6. "Raven's Fair" [0:59]
7. "Dad's House" [0:47]
8. "Ella" [1:29]
9. "My Son" [1:03]
10. "What Poem?" [1:31]
11. "Caskets" [1:57]
12. "Motel Hearse" [1:22]
13. "It Can't Be" [1:40]
14. "Funeral" [0:49]
15. "Billy" [2:42]
16. "Perplexed" [1:25]
17. "Steal Billy" [0:50]
18. "Lips Moving" [1:57]
19. "Coffin" [2:16]
20. "Photos" [1:36]
21. "Map Drive" [0:49]
22. "Guignol" [1:57]
23. "He Talked" [3:06]
24. "It's Soup" [2:09]
25. "Full Tank" [1:49]
26. "Doll Wall" [1:37]
27. "All the Dolls" [1:07]
28. "One Left" [0:27]
29. "Mary Shaw" [0:31]
30. "Dummy" [1:05]
31. "Family Album" [0:37]

In his personal blog, screenwriter Whannell reveals the origins of the film within the context of the Hollywood film industry. In a candid post entitled "Dud Silence: The Hellish Experience of Making a Bad Horror Film", Whannell explains that the film was conceived following the advice of his agent at the time and that a "script doctor" was eventually employed by the production studio. Whannell concludes the post with a description of the key lessons that were learned following the Dead Silence experience:

After everything is said and done, I'm almost glad Dead Silence happened, because it gave me an extreme, coal-face lesson in what not to do. It was like learning to swim by leaping off Niagara Falls. I only write scripts on spec now, which means that I write them in my own time without getting paid and then take them out into the world to see if anyone's interested. Never again will I enter the arranged marriage of selling a pitch. I have also become very gun-shy about working with studios. In the world of independent film, what you write ends up on screen. Plus, they don't have the money to bring in script doctors! Works fine for me. Who knows, maybe one day I will work with a studio again...[11]

• Official website
• Dead Silence at IMDb
• Dead Silence at AllMovie
• Dead Silence at Box Office Mojo
• Dead Silence at Rotten Tomatoes
• Dead Silence at Metacritic