Director Report Card: James Wan (2007) - Part One

2. Dead Silence

“Saw” generated a lot of buzz at the Sundance Film Festival, packing a theater full three nights in a row. After Lions Gate picked it up, James Wan and Leigh Whannell's agents insisted they have another production ready to go before “Saw” hit theaters. The idea being, if their debut flopped, they would already have their second chance in the pot. It was sound advice but Wan and Whannell were burnt-out from “Saw's” speedy production. Nevertheless, the duo put their heads together and pitched a haunted ventriloquist dummy movie to Universal. Wan must have sensed that “Saw's” hyper-violent reputation was already building infamy and was the kind of thing that could easily derail his career. He hoped a moody ghost story would prove his versatility. Unfortunately, the studio demanded rewrites and eventually brought in script doctors to tinker with Whannell's script. After cycling through several clunky working titles – “Shhhh...,” “Mary Shaw,” “The Doll” – and the film would be released as “Dead Silence.” It was not especially well received, commercially or critically, in 2007 but has gathered a cult following since then. 

Jamie and his wife, Lisa, have their domestic bliss interrupted when they receive a bizarre package: A vintage ventriloquist dummy with the name “Billy.” Jamie's home town of Raven's Fair had an urban legend attached to it: Mary Shaw, a popular ventriloquist in the thirties, died following the disappearance of a young boy. She was buried with her dummies. Her ghost is said to abduct people, test subjects for her quest to build the perfect doll. If you scream around her, she'll rip your tongue out. Jamie thinks it's only a legend but, while away from the apartment, Lisa is murdered in bizarre fashion. Under investigation from the cops, he returns to Raven's Fair, finding the town all but abandoned. He seeks out his rich father and new stepmom, before digging deeper into the mystery of Mary Shaw. Turns out, it is not merely a story. The ghost is real, plans to be reunited with her puppets, and have her revenge on the town.

It's an evergreen horror trope. We seemingly can all agree that ventriloquist dummies are kind of weird. Dolls already straddle the line between cute and creepy for many people, their plastic skin and painted irises venturing into the uncanny valley. They look a lot like something that is alive but most assuredly are not. (We hope.) The ventriloquist's tool takes this further, given still not quite life-like movement and voice by a puppeteer. Since at least 1929's “The Great Gabbo,” films have been making the suggestion that ventriloquists share an unhealthy link with their partners in performance. Horror films have certainly seen their share of living, or otherwise unsettling, dummies and dolls. We already knew James Wan had a fascination with puppets, having already used one as Jigsaw's mascot in “Saw.” “Dead Silence” sees him fully embracing the concept, making another Billy the Puppet one of the main stars of the show.

Whether Wan and his team did anything new with the idea of a creepy ventriloquist dummy is another question. “Dead Silence” rests heavily on the inherent spookiness of dummies by themselves. It works best when the camera gazes into Billy's painted eyes, before they start to slowly move. A flash-back to one of Mary Shaw's actual performances, wherein Billy takes personal offense to a heckler, acting seemingly on its own will beyond Mary's control, is exactly the kind of stuff that makes this a fruitful trope. The idea that the ventriloquist is expressing some suppressed emotion or the doll is an extension of their own hang-ups is fascinating. “Dead Silence” never runs much with those ideas afterwards though. It starts and stops with Mary seeing her puppets as her children, never seeking to explore any particular meaning or psychology in its set-up. “Magic,” this definitely is not.

“Dead Silence's” objective is far more humble than that. Wan and Whannell clearly set out to make an old fashion ghost story. The film clearly pays tribute to a number of predecessors in the genre. Wan uses the 1930s version of the Universal Studios logo at the beginning, showing his classic horror fan credentials. There's some Hammer horror vibes in the elaborate sets and misty graveyards of the small town. Mary Shaw resembles both Susan Hill's "The Woman in Black" and the stiffened corpse at the center of “Black Sabbath's” "The Drop of Water" segment. A corridor of billowing curtains while lightning flashes and thunder rolls outside reminds me of “The Cat and the Canary” and any number of other classic gothic chillers. In its best moments, “Dead Silence” successfully captures some of the ambiance of these earlier movies. There's a lot of billowing fog in the film, lots of shadowy hallways. The headlights from a car passing down a darkened road and through a mansion's gates scratches that itch. A shot of a clown doll in a rocking chair, its face passing in and out of darkness, is easily the coolest in the entire film. “Dead Silence” is never as scary or creepy as it wants to be but, when the mist rolls in and the cobwebs build up on the tombstones, it comes closest to achieving its goals. 

“Dead Silence” is trying very hard to be scary too. In accordance with the title, the film falls eerily silently right before Mary Shaw appears. This goes to show that more attention was paid to the sound design here than you'd expect from a quickie horror movie. Popcorn munching boo-shows is what Wan would come to specialize in. Meaning these silent stretches usually proceeds a loud shrieks on the soundtrack. However, "Dead Silence" is not as reliant on jump scares as you might think. A nightmare sequence, which otherwise serves no purpose to the story, has Billy appearing at Jamie's bedside in a red-tinted hotel room. The build-up actually works decently, before the visage of Shaw's ghost bursts into the room. This is true all throughout "Dead Silence," a movie that often goes for loudness when its quieter moments are way more effective. 

We know that "Dead Silence" was Wan's attempt to prove himself capable of more than merely tossing severed body parts and blood and guts around. With "Saw II" already in production, he must have foreseen the wave of torture-heavy flicks he had unleashed. However, you can definitely still tell that the same team who made "Saw" is behind "Dead Silence." This was Wan's first collaboration with cinematographer John R. Leonetti and editor Michael N. Knue, both veterans of the horror genre. Despite an expert team, the manic montages from "Saw" reappear here with a little less frequency. Usually, they are used during scene transition, which is less distracting. In fact, some of the camera movements or visual choices – such as a flashback beginning as a scratchy, black-and-white newsreel – aren't bad. At times, this is a really nice looking movie with a creepy atmosphere around it. 

That tension – between a desire to make a moodier film and the need to repeat "Saw's" big, dumb, loud success – is present all throughout. Close-ups of mutilated faces occur often, the film packing in enough gore to earn its R-rating. The script contains a surprise ending, one far more nonsensical and meaningless than "Saw's" climatic twist. Mary Shaw is give an elongated CGI tongue that extends out from her mouth and menacingly licks people's faces. I guess the idea is that her own tongue is extra-long from stitching her victims' tongue to her own? It looks goofy and isn't the only instance of subpar digital effects in the movie. As the film goes on, it gets a lot sillier. There are action movie worthy stunts, of people tossed through the air. All the while, another score from Charlie Clouser blares and hammers your ears, ignoring that the quieter, music box-like melody is actually its best touch. 

That "Dead Silence" is often derailed by a need to be bigger and flashier than a ghost story should be is frustrating. I think there was a lot of potential here. "Dead Silence" is ultimately a story about how you can't go back home. When Jamie returns to Raven's Fair, it's practically a ghost town. The town mortician, his mentally ill partner, Jamie's rich dad and his trophy wife are seemingly the only people left in the whole area. When Jamie is arguing with his father, he points out that his mother has been painted out of the family portrait. Familial resentment is the bread and butter of the ghost genre, the spirits of the dead representing bad memories that can never be put to rest. The film also resides soundly in the "Small Town with a Dark Secret" trope, another favorite of mine, as Mary Shaw's wrath was brought down on the community for the vigilante slaying of her. 

I'll go so far as to say I believe Mary Shaw had the potential to become an iconic horror villain. Her pale face, mouth carved up like a ventriloquist's dummy, and black gown is striking. The urban legend invented around her follows a classical mythological premise. Much like La Llorona or Lilith before her, Shaw is a child snatching she-spectre. She had no children of her own, filling that void with her countless dolls. Her evil action was born out of this desire for a child. The script never questions the sexist intent behind this legend. That being a mother is so important to a woman, she'll go mad without it and become a twisted inversion of the life-birthing Gaea, instead taking children away. Whannell's script undermines this point, actually, by having Shaw target adults more often than kids. The only implication that she preys on children is that the catchy nursery rhyme about her is clearly the kind of thing that would spread around the playground. All of this could've been developed more, resulting in a much smarter and sturdier film.

However, that speaks to another problem with "Dead Silence." Its story is actually shockingly thin. Once the inciting incident of Jamie and his wife receiving the dummy kicks off, there's truly only a handful of plot points that follow. He heads to his home town, buries Billy in Shaw's graveyard for her puppets – another near element – and argues with his dad. The rest of the film is more-or-less composed of our protagonist trying to dig up clues, getting attacked by the ghost, and running into an incompetent, always-shaving private detective. I'm not sure how much of this is Leigh Whannell's fault. The film repeatedly pauses for lengthy exposition dumps, from the town mortician, Jamie's dad, or even one of Shaw's dummies. He would criticize script doctors for fulfilling the studio's request for more clarified "rules" around the ghost. It's easy to assume that these sequences are what he was referring to. I agree, it's dumb to simply blankly state the backstory of your villain, to have someone just tell it to the main character. Wouldn't watching the hero uncover this information on his own have been a lot more compelling?

Then again, it's not like the protagonist is especially interesting either. There have been repeated attempts over the years to make Australian hunk Ryan Kwaten into a movie star and they have never stuck. Kwaten is blandly handsome but doesn't have much in the way of presence. Not that the character of Jamie, lacking any emotional center at all, gave him much to work with. He never seems especially haunted by the death of his wife. (Played by underrated Canadian scream queen Laura Regan, who probably should've been the star of the movie instead.) Donnie Wahlberg, as Detective Lipton, is really the only other consistent character in the film. He shows up repeatedly to hassle the hero before slinking off until it's decided he should appear again, ultimately getting the silliest death in the movie. Wahlberg convincingly mugs in his scenes but it would never be mistaken for meaningful acting. It's hard to say if any of these characters have much of an inner life at all. 

To learn that "Dead Silence" was a rush job for Whannell and Wan is not horribly surprising. The movie often feels half-formed, with a story seriously lacking in any narrative meat and totally blank characters. However, Wan's instinct to focus more on the foggy ambiance over foot-slicing gore was a smart one. There's enough spooky atmosphere in "Dead Silence" for me to almost like it. Mary Shaw is kind of a cool horror movie monster. The dummies are mostly creepy. The film exists in that half-way point between churned-out mainstream horror sludge and something a little cooler and smarter. That genre fans, always one to seize on some chilly scenery or a decent villain, would dig this one back up and make it a minor cult classic makes sense. A sequel was considered at one point, before the below-par box office came in. It's not hard to imagine an alternate timeline where Mary Shaw became a reoccurring cinematic baddie, with the Halloween masks and action figures to go with it. (A fitting fate for a doll-obsessed ghost.) At the same time, I can't recommend it myself. It's better than the similar but much dumber "Darkness Falls," for whatever that is worth. [Grade: C+]