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. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (500x741, 57 KB) // Movie poster for the 2007 film Dead Silence. ... James Wan (born 1977) is an Australian film director from Perth. ... Gregg Hoffman (June 11, 1963 – December 4, 2005) born in Phoenix, Arizona, was a movie producer responsible for developing the hit movies Saw and Saw II. He was working on Saw III and other films for Twisted Pictures when he died in a hospital in Hollywood, California of natural causes... Leigh Whannell (born January 17, 1977) is an Australian screenwriter, producer, and actor, perhaps most famous for his work on the Saw film series. ... Ryan Kwanten (b. ... Donald Edmond Wahlberg, Jr. ... For other uses, see Judith Roberts (disambiguation). ... Bob Gunton (born November 15, 1945 in Santa Monica, California) is an American actor who is known for his role as the evil Warden Norton in the 1994 movie The Shawshank Redemption. ... Amber Valletta (born February 9, 1974) is an American supermodel and actress. ... John R. Leonetti is a cinematographer and film director whose career in film began in 1991. ... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Amputee boxer Baxter Humby, as Spider-Man, throws a computer-generated punch through the chest of Sandman, portrayed by Thomas Haden Church 2007 has been referred to, by film and media critics, as the year of the threequels, a nickname referring to both the 2004 summer movie season and several... “Horror Movie” redirects here. ... The Saw film series is a horror/thriller film franchise created by James Wan and Leigh Whannell, beginning in 2004 and continuing to the present and into the future. ... James Wan (born 1977) is an Australian film director from Perth. ... Leigh Whannell (born January 17, 1977) is an Australian screenwriter, producer, and actor, perhaps most famous for his work on the Saw film series. ... Ryan Kwanten (b. ... Donald Edmond Wahlberg, Jr. ... For other uses, see Judith Roberts (disambiguation). ... Amputee boxer Baxter Humby, as Spider-Man, throws a computer-generated punch through the chest of Sandman, portrayed by Thomas Haden Church 2007 has been referred to, by film and media critics, as the year of the threequels, a nickname referring to both the 2004 summer movie season and several... is the 177th day of the year (178th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ...

Taglines:

• You scream, you die.
• Just because it's not alive doesn't mean it's dead.

Plot

After he receives a mysterious doll in the mail, Jamie Ashen believes there is something ominous about it. When he leaves his apartment to pick up his dinner, his wife, Lisa, sets up the doll 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 doll, 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 town of Ravens Fair. Billy is a puppet that has appeared in the Saw films. ... The Saw film series is a horror/thriller film franchise created by James Wan and Leigh Whannell, beginning in 2004 and continuing to the present and into the future. ...

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 dolls. He is warned by the mortician's wife of the danger of Shaw, and realizes he should rebury Billy. He does so, only to find the doll 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 doll to the mortician, Henry, who finally tells him the tale of Mary Shaw.

Shaw was a ventriloquist whose ambition was to make the perfect doll. 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. He 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 dolls, Henry, a young boy at the time, saw her as a ghost in his father's mortuary, though he had covered his mouth to keep from screaming. Ventriloquism is an act of deception in which a person (ventriloquist) manipulates his or her voice so that it appears that the voice is coming from elsewhere. ... Promotional poster for a Grand Guignol performance This article is about the Paris theatre. ... A heckler is a person who shouts an uninvited comment, usually disparaging, at a performance or event, or interrupting set-piece speeches, for example at a political meeting. ...

Deciding to investigate the theater, Jamie finds Shaw's dressing room. There he discovers an old book of her's with her plans to make the perfect doll. 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 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 grand-children 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 dolls had been exhumed and were missing, Jamie receives a phone call from Henry, who, unknown to Jamie, had already been killed, 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 99 of Shaw's dolls placed in cases upon the wall. With most of the noises going quiet, the dolls 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 Shaw is possessing the dolls, 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. A marionette is a type of puppet with strings controlled by a puppeteer from above. ... Spiritual possession is a concept of many religions and tales, where it is believed that a demon may take temporary control of a human body, resulting in noticeable changes in behaviour. ...

Jamie realizes that Billy is the only remaining doll, 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 doll 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 ready to kill Jamie. Mary Shaw shows her puppet book with pictures of Jamie, Detective Lipton, his father, 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.

Beware. This movie is not as good as you think it may be. You can (more or less) guess whats about to happen next. A classic by-the-books horror movie.

Cast and crew

Production team

• James Wan: writer, director
• Leigh Whannell: writer
• Scott Stuber: executive producer
• Mark Burg: producer
• Gregg Hoffman: producer
• Oren Koules: producer

James Wan (born 1977) is an Australian film director from Perth. ... Leigh Whannell (born January 17, 1977) is an Australian screenwriter, producer, and actor, perhaps most famous for his work on the Saw film series. ... Gregg Hoffman (June 11, 1963 – December 4, 2005) born in Phoenix, Arizona, was a movie producer responsible for developing the hit movies Saw and Saw II. He was working on Saw III and other films for Twisted Pictures when he died in a hospital in Hollywood, California of natural causes...

Cast

Ryan Kwanten (b. ... Donald Edmond Wahlberg, Jr. ... Bob Gunton (born November 15, 1945 in Santa Monica, California) is an American actor who is known for his role as the evil Warden Norton in the 1994 movie The Shawshank Redemption. ... Amber Valletta (born February 9, 1974) is an American supermodel and actress. ... Laura Regan (born in 1977 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada) is a Canadian actress best known for her role as Jessica Lynch in the movie Saving Jessica Lynch. ... Steven Taylor is a fictional character played by Peter Purves in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. ...

Poem

The poem used to commercialize the film was not present in the movie; instead a close variation was used.

• In online banners, trailers, and commercials promoting Dead Silence, the poem from Jamie's childhood was displayed as:
  Beware the stare of Mary Shaw
  She had no children, only dolls
  And if you see her, Do not scream
  Or she'll rip your tongue out at the seam.
• In the movie, however, the poem was recited as:
  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

Box Office

Dead Silence did not perform well 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 16 November 2007, it has made $18,202,265 worldwide^[2] , with most of Europe yet to open the film. is the 320th day of the year (321st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

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 doll 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 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 simply staying silent can save you from Mary Shaw. Then she blows out the candle, ending the movie.

Trivia

• In a scene towards the end of the film when Jamie is walking through Mary Shaw's room containing all the dolls one of the dolls lying on the ground is Billy the Puppet from the Saw franchise films which James Wan and Leigh Whannell also directed and created.^{[citation needed]}
• 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

Billy is a puppet that has appeared in the Saw films. ... James Wan (born 1977) is an Australian film director from Perth. ... Leigh Whannell (born January 17, 1977) is an Australian screenwriter, producer, and actor, perhaps most famous for his work on the Saw film series. ... The Palais Theatre is a a former picture theatre now functioning as a live performance venue located in St Kilda, Victoria, Australia. ... Universal Studios Florida is a theme park in Orlando, Florida, part of the Universal Orlando Resort. ... Halloween Horror Nights is one of the largest Halloween events in the U.S., presented annually at Universal Orlando Resort. ...

Future

There are rumors of a possible sequel to be released in 2010. This was brought along after the announcement of Saw 5 and Saw 6 When several Internet fan sites noted that Dead Silence Writer and Director James Wan and Leigh Whannell might consider doing a Dead Silence sequel.^{[citation needed]} James Wan (born 1977) is an Australian film director from Perth. ... Leigh Whannell (born January 17, 1977) is an Australian screenwriter, producer, and actor, perhaps most famous for his work on the Saw film series. ...

References

External links

• Official Site
• Dead Silence at the Internet Movie Database
• Dead Silence at Movieweb
• First review at Dread Central
• Dead Silence at Rotten Tomatoes