Dead Silence

Saw Dead Silence (thanks, Kim!) It was a modern horror film (which means, of course, that I had to watch it with one hand on the volume at all times. I'll always be a wimp.) It revolved around killer puppets. I thought the way the themes of the plot tied together was the most interesting. I believe the film began as a primarily sensual concept: the murders should always happen in (dead) silence. This allows the boom and bang of the jump scare to be all the jumpier. From there, the film's writers hit upon ventriloquist dummies as a rich source of ideas revolving around voice/non-voice/sound/living/dead/etc-type themes. From there, they filled in the details with a belligerent cop, some old curses, spooky dolls, add in a harmless crazy-person and we're done!

The original concept is quite promising but those details are so regrettably by-the-numbers. It's frustrating and I wish someone had put more care into the film, drawing meaning out of the themes and gaining insight. Of course, big words aside, I think this all really stems from a desire for a film which is less horrifying and more thought-provoking (but such is my weakness.) There's also an ancillary theme of parenthood/childhood but this also doesn't really go anywhere (for me anyway. Then again, I may have missed some illuminating dialogue in the scary scenes.) Again, the themes and concepts it toys with are interesting and rich, but the film primarily uses them to deliver scares. Not that there's anything wrong with that mind you, it's just that I'm not very interested in scares. Of the scares, they are indeed quite scary. This may not mean much coming from a wimp like me, but it was enough to make me resort to the volume control many times.

The exact style of horror also deserves a mention. It opens with a herky-jerky, fast/slow credit sequence that seemed reminiscent of reality TV openers. It continues into a Paranormal Activity-style domestic horror. Then someone mentions "local myths" and we're off to a spooky old town where we enter full-blown, classic Vampire-&-Frankenstein land, with lightning, dead leaves, and dry ice galore. Later on there's even an evil stepmother! I dug this collage of different horror styles. It's not as messy as I make it sound and felt nice and homage-y to me, like it was stripping back layers, travelling back in time to some primal place (this is even set up, perhaps, by an opening text crawl about the Latin roots of the word "ventriloquist.") I also liked spotting the different styles we went through (which, reader beware, sometimes means I'm making stuff up!) So, all in all, not a bad film. It was a bit much for a snivelling wimp like me, and also a bit too empty-headed for a pretentious ass like me, but it delivered scares and entertained. It did what it set out to do and did it well. What more can we ask for?

PS - The theatre at the climax is called the Guignol. This is appropriate for two reasons.