MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE DROP DEAD FRED

Now before anyone asks, no, I am not going to do be doing an extensive write-up about Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN remake. I've already received more than one email from people asking me if I plan to do so. Though I could no doubt do a write-up about that fiasco that could possibly rival last month's double whammy of CAPTIVITY and I KNOW WHO KILLED ME (quite possibly the most popular Foyeurism I've ever written), sorry, I just didn't feel like it. Besides, I pretty much fire off every zinger I had in me and cover all the bases of why the movie is a mess during the DINNER FOR FIENDS: THE DAY AFTER HALLOWEEN podcast I took part in with my Dread Central colleagues. You can CLICK HERE to listen to that 45-minute NSFW roundtable tirade. I've also since seen the workprint of the film that leaked online and though it still wasn't a very good movie it was still a vast improvement and in many ways a totally different film. It's fairly evident that this was yet another case of Dimension Films destroying a movie in order to make it conform to their definition of marketability. I know long feel anger towards the theatrically released version, only pity.

Now as for this month, like I said in the preamble to last month's, this one was already in the can. Actually, I split it up again because there was to be another movie reviewed in this that I decided to hold-off because it was almost long enough to warrant its own Foyeurism. Also, on the plus side, pretty much every Foyeurism for the rest of the year is already written. As always, something might pop up at the theater or on DVD that bumps one of those back. We'll see. This month you're getting a reprint of my review of ROBERTO BENIGNI'S PINOCCHIO, which some of you have probably already read, that was originally posted over at Ain't It Cool News from back in the days when I was working the weekend overnight shift at work and writing up reviews on a computer at work with no Spellcheck - never a good thing when the person writing has forgotten most of what they'd learned back in English class. Go back and look at my earliest net writings and you'll see a gradual evolution as I not only got a writing program with a Spellcheck, I started remembering how not to completely murder grammar. Who am I kidding? I still butcher proper grammar. The comma is my mortal enemy, you know? And in this cleaned up, slightly rewritten review, I actually spell PINOCCHIO correctly - no “PINNOCHIO” this time. Boy, was that ever embarrassing.

Joining it is my long overdue dissecting of DEAD SILENCE. I know some of you liked the movie. I did not. Enjoy.

 

FOYEURISM FOR DUMMIES

 

They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. If that old saying is true then Roberto Benigni's PINOCCHIO is the Autobahn on which you will spend 90 minutes of your life speeding at a 120 mph into the lake of fire.

There is only one word that can truly sum up Benigni's PINOCCHIO: catastrophic. The film is a catastrophic disaster of such epic proportions that Irwin Allen could have used it as the basis for one of his all-star disaster flicks. It fails on every single level. Nothing works. Nothing. PINOCCHIO aspires to be whimsical, magical, funny, and heartwarming. It fails and fails miserably. Instead the film is annoying, incoherent, unfunny, and virtually unwatchable. The life lessons the story teaches ring hollow and, worst of all, the film is dreadfully boring.

It really saddens me that PINOCCHIO turned out so badly because I like Roberto Benigni and I loved LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL. Yeah, you heard me. I loved LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL and think it should have won Best Picture that year. I know there are a lot of people out there loathe Benigni but I suspect that has more to do with the Hollywood hype machine that shoved him down everyone's throat non-stop from the moment LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL opened up until Oscar night than it did people simply disliking the movie. And let's face it, once Harvey Weinstein anoints you his flavor of the moment it's hard to remove that stigma. Just look at Gwyneth Paltrow.

I'm sure Benigni also didn't win over some people by running around the Academy Awards acting like Yakov Smirnoff on a bad acid trip, although I personally found that behavior refreshing compared to usual displays of uncontrollable crying or reading of a laundry list of names to thank. However, after sitting through PINOCCHIO, if anyone wants to beat the crap out of Benigni just let me know and I'll be happy to hold him for you while you punch away.

Once upon a time, a lonely old man named Gepetto carves a marionette boy out of wood that is then brought to life by The Blue Fairy. Puppet longs to be a real boy. Mischievous puppet gets into trouble. Cricket serves as puppet's conscious. Puppet's nose grows when telling a lie. Puppet joins a travelling puppet show. Puppet turns into a donkey. Puppet swallowed by a giant whale. Puppet learns honesty, unselfishness, and right from wrong. Blue Fairy turns puppet into a real boy and everyone lives happily ever after. The end.

As you see, the fairy tale story of PINOCCHIO is a simple one - or at least it should have been. Alas, Benigni and his screenwriting partner have joined forces to make this simple fairy tale virtually incoherent. From the moment that PINOCCHIO comes to life, which is in the first five minutes, the film becomes a rambling mess that could desperately use some Ritalin. PINOCCHIO's plot is just a series of misadventures that fall into two categories: those which begin and end in a matter of moments and those that have a long set-up and then just end without any real resolution. It's all a whole lot of nothing. The movie has no arc and the misadventures don't flow well into one another. One subplot ends abruptly and another begins. I can't help but to wonder if the fine folks at MiramAXE (who are far wiser than you or I) chopped up this movie and did away with certain scenes. If not, that means that the movie really is as poorly written as it appears on screen.

Now compare that simplistic breakdown of the story of PINOCCHIO a moment ago to the one that Roberto Benigni has given the world.

Blue Fairy enchants a butterfly that then enchants a log. Log then rampages through the village streets until landing on Gepetto's doorstep. Lonely old man Gepetto carves a puppet shaped like a 50 year-old Italian out of the log and wishes it was a real son. Puppet comes to life and begins jumping around like an idiot. Puppet steals father's toupee and runs amok through the streets doing his DROP DEAD FRED impression. Father sends puppet to school. Puppet sells schoolbooks for money. Puppet tries to join travelling circus rather than going to school. Puppet begs for money. Puppet meets two thieves known as The Cat and The Fox who seek to rob him. Puppet gets chased by The Cat and The Fox who dress as Klansmen. Puppet gets hung from a tree. Puppet meets the Blue Fairy. Puppet's nose grows when lying, but only when in the presence of the Blue Fairy. The Cat and The Fox swindle the stupid puppet out of his money. Puppet throws a hissy fit. Puppet gets imprisoned. Gepetto searches for his puppet son who he misses so much even though they've had about 60 seconds of screen time together. Puppet befriends a young hooligan in prison. Puppet and his new hooligan friend take turns licking a stolen lollipop. Puppet gets released from prison. Puppet longs for his father even though they've had only about 60 seconds of screen time together. Puppet finds out the Blue Fairy is dead. Bird that talks like the sassy waitress on "What's Happening!!" tells Puppet where he can find his father. Puppet finds father just in time to see him get lost at sea. Puppet contemplates suicide. Puppet finds out the Blue Fairy is not dead. Puppet goes to live with the Blue Fairy. Puppet gets arrested for attempted murder. Puppet escapes. Puppet gets captured by a crazy farmer and forced to work as a guard dog. Puppet escapes again. Puppet forgoes duties to party with hooligan friend. Puppet turns into a donkey. Donkey jumps through flaming hoops at a donkey circus MC'd by the voice of Regis Philbin. Donkey gets hurt. Donkey gets tossed into the ocean to drown. Donkey turns back into a puppet. Puppet gets swallowed by a Megalodon whale shark. Puppet reunites with father in the Meg's stomach. Puppet and father escape. Puppet earns money by performing backbreaking manual labor while father is bedridden with illness. Puppet's hooligan friend who also turned into a donkey dies. Blue Fairy makes puppet a real boy. Blue Fairy also sets them up in a swanky new house and gives Gepetto a full head of hair. Ex-puppet turned real boy goes to school and everyone lives happily ever after!

Well, everyone except the kid that died.

Which one of them you think looks like the bigger jackass?

Is this the story of PINOCCHIO you remember from your childhood? Is this the story of PINOCCHIO you want your children to remember all their lives? I think not. I realize Benigni set out to do a literal translation of the original story of PINOCCHIO, as opposed to the Disney-fied animated version we all know and love, but is the original story really this incoherent? From what I've been told - yes. So does that technically make this movie a success then? I'd still argue "no."

Even if the story hadn't been a clusterfuck for the ages the movie still has other serious problems. The first of which is that Benigni cast himself as the title character. I'm sorry, but PINOCCHIO should not appear to be almost the same age as Gepetto. Granted Benigni cast adults in all the child roles, if you pay attention you'll still notice that all the adults playing kids appear to be in their twenties, thus making 50-year old Benigni stand out all the more awkwardly. It also makes things confusing at times since you're not always sure who is supposed to be an adult and who is supposed to be a kid. I guess if someone had facial hair or appeared to be over 60 then that person was an adult. The movie tries to explain the adults playing kids concept in the opening narrative by announcing that the story is set in a world where "kids look like adults and adults sometimes act like children." It still stinks of a vanity project on Benigni's part run amok.

Now to be fair to Benigni, the biggest problem with the movie lies firmly at the feet of Miramax. PINOCCHIO has been released into theaters dubbed in English, as opposed to being in its original Italian with English subtitles; a last minute decision on the studio's part. The dubbing really isn't entirely terrible except for one character in particular. Unfortunately, that one character in particular that is Pinocchio himself and he's in almost every single scene of the movie. The English language dub job the studio did for Roberto Benigni is simply inexcusable. Folks, they hired Breckin Meyer to do Benigni's voice. You know, Breckin Meyer, the guy from ROAD TRIP who mistakenly sent his girlfriend the video of him having sex with another girl and set out to get it back? You know, Breckin Meyer, one of the stars of RAT RACE? You know, Breckin Meyer, the pretentious lead singer of the band in CAN'T HARDLY WAIT? Yes, that Breckin Meyer! And we, the audience, are supposed to believe that his twenty-something California dude voice is coming out of the body of a 50-year old Italian? You got Roberto Benigni running around Italy speaking with a voice that sounds like a whiny Stewart Little, for gosh sake! From the moment he starts talking, the voice is so grating, so distracting, and so off putting that it makes the film unbearable. And if it wasn't bad enough that his voice is completely inappropriate for the character, making matters all the more worse is the fact that Meyer does such a horrendous job reciting his lines. Regardless of what the emotion is supposed to be, he yells every line and yells them all with the same inflexion in his voice.

There are even lines of dialogue delivered so poorly that I almost wonder if he was doing it sarcastically because even he hated this movie. Either way, it doesn't matter because it completely ruins the film and this movie was bad enough to begin with. I swear the kid from GODZILLA VS. MEGALON had a more convincing voice dub than Roberto Benigni got for his own movie. Somebody at Miramax deserves to be publicly flogged for this, but then there are people at MiramAXE that deserve to be flogged for lots of things. And if Benigni actually approved of this dubbing himself then he really doesn't have anyone to blame but himself.

I also have to mention the other instance of bad dubbing that's just jarring. The bird which briefly shows up to give PINOCCHIO directions is voiced by Queen Latifah. While I'm all for colorblind casting, her voice is just way too modern sounding for a fairy tale that is supposed to be set "once upon a time" in the old country.

I understand the subsequent DVD release featured the original Italian language with English subtitles as an option. I've no doubt that made for a dramatic improvement. People have told me it's much better; I still can't bring myself to watch it. I remain unconvinced that even a good dub job would have change the fact that Benigni's PINOCCHIO would still be such an unlikable character. I realize the character being a brat is part of the point but I found him to be nail-on-the-chalkboard detestable. Benigni plays his PINOCCHIO as an aloof narcissist prone to throwing temper tantrums, often behaving in a downright hateful manner. About a minute after the cricket (who looks like Paul Bartel in a tuxedo with antennae on his head) first introduces himself to PINOCCHIO, the puppet is chasing him around the room trying to squash him with a mallet. Exactly what purpose the cricket serves in this version of PINOCCHIO is anyone's guess because all he really does is show up briefly a few times to scold PINOCCHIO. There's never any sense of friendship or mentoring, but then how could there be since PINOCCHIO himself comes across as such an unsympathetic individual. The relationship between the two never really progresses past the attempted insecticide stage.

What exactly makes Benigni's PINOCCHIO a puppet anyway? He just looks like an ordinary man wearing tacky harlequin clothes and a pointy hat. Everyone calls him a puppet but there isn't anything about him that distinguishes him as such unless you count his poor fashion sense. At least in the Disney animated classic the puppet Pinocchio looked like a living puppet; here there are no markings or make-up on Benigni to make him stand out from actual people. Sure he has a little too much pancake on his face but that hardly makes one a wood carving come to life.

Never ask the WISHMASTER Djinn that you want to be built like John Holmes

At the end when Pinocchio finally becomes a real boy, he wakes up in a new set of clothes and sees his puppet-self sitting lifeless in a chair across the room. Rather than just make him a real boy, the Blue Fairy instead separated the boy and the puppet into two separate entities. Why? Maybe it's just me but that scene seemed rather unsettling considering how nonchalant he plays his reaction to seeing the now lifeless puppet he once was or is still is or... See what I mean?

Also, the production design left a lot to be desired if you ask me. It seemed as if somebody watched Spielberg's HOOK, took one look at Never-Never Land, and said, "I want it to look just like that only drearier!" The colors are drab and faded and there's way too much brown and beige in this movie. I understand the look they were going for, but it still looks too dreary for its own good. The only production design worth complimenting is the Blue Fairy's mode of transportation; a majestic looking ivory carriage drawn by a horde of white mice is the only thing in the movie that seems befitting of a fairy tale. Other than that, PINOCCHIO is a fairy tale utterly devoid of anything that appears magical or wondrous or enchanted.

The only true bright spot in the film was the Blue Fairy herself played by Benigni's real life wife, Nicoletta Braschi (Lucky bastard!). She brings a touch of elegance and class with her screen presence and Glenn Close does a fine job dubbing her English speaking voice. If this had been a good rendition of the material she would have made a great Blue Fairy; a shame her character is also a victim of the muddled screenplay. One moment she's dead and the next she's alive? Huh? If she wasn't dead then why did she lead PINOCCHIO to believe that she was? Is she really a fairy anyway or just a woman with magic powers? Why does a fairy need a butler? And just how did she know that Gepetto was a lonely old man who opined for a son of his own?

A family with two kids got up and walked out only about ten minutes into this catastrophe, and keep in mind that they were supposed to be the target audience for this film. Miramax chose to skip the art house and tried mass marketing this movie to the McDonald's Happy Meal crowd - a colossal blunder to be sure. I completely understood why that family walked out and was seriously tempted to do so myself several times during the film's first act. In fact, I had to make a conscious effort to force myself to sit through the whole darn thing - quite the undertaking, I assure you.

At one point I checked my watch to see how much longer it would be until the torment was over and it turned out I was only 35-minutes in. For a few moments I felt like I was going to cry because I knew that it still had another hour to go and I wasn't going to allow myself to leave until the closing credits rolled. I'm not exaggerating to be funny. PINOCCHIO was (and remains) one the most excruciating movie-going experience I've ever experienced. Not since Robin Williams' TOYS have I not walked out of a movie this soul-crushingly bad. Easily the worst movie I saw in all of 2002 and just mentioning the title brings back fleeting sensations of anguish.

As I said back then, "Mr. Benigni, you pulled off a minor miracle with LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL but now its time to leave the movie comedian out to make the world a better place crap to Robin Williams. It's time to go back and do some more screwball comedies like THE MONSTER or just something that isn't hellbent on making the world a better place through cinema. I know you didn't intend for PINOCCHIO to turn out so badly, but it did, so please don't do it again. If you insist on making another movie based on classic literature, Roberto Benigni's FRANKENSTEIN seems like a perversely entertaining concept to me. But whatever you do next... NO MORE PINOCCHIO'S!"

Even Benigni couldn't believe he'd made this crap

The only thing worse than a bad movie is a bad movie with tons of potential that fails to live up to any of its promise. Initial good advance word of mouth and a great trailer had me hopeful that DEAD SILENCE would be a good one. Instead, just 24 short hours after I sat through the Sandra Bullock crapfest PREMONITION (REVIEW HERE), I found myself once again sitting in a darkened theater watching a movie so ridiculously dumb that perhaps I might one day develop some affection for the sheer idiocy of it. A lot of horror fans have continued to praise this one. Sorry, I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid. Actually, I already drank it. It was a Purplesaurus Dreck - the official Kool-Aid of DEAD SILENCE.

I still didn't exit the theater this past April anywhere near as pissed off as this one guy I overheard on the way out. That guy started ranting to his two friends about how bad the movie was, so pissed everything he said was qualified with an f-word, repeatedly describing the movie as horrible, not scary, and "a piece of shit", from the moment he left the auditorium and didn't let up even as he climbed into their vehicle parked a few spaces away from mine. A major source of contention on his part was that he'd wanted to see 300 but his two friends talked him into DEAD SILENCE. That guy needs new friends.

From the creator of SAW comes DEAD SILENCE and if you thought the SAW films were prone to becoming increasingly silly and then capped off with improbable climactic plot twists then stay tuned. Granted, after last month's Foyeurism double whammy of CAPTIVITY and I KNOW WHO KILLED ME it seems silly in of itself to ever complain about a horror movie becoming too preposterous, but then 2007 really does seem to be on its way to being the year of the preposterous plot twist.

It seems writer/director James Wan got it in his head that the creepy ventriloquist dummy the Jigsaw character used as a calling card/mouthpiece in the SAW films deserved its own spin-off film. That's all I can figure as to what possessed him to go down the evil ventriloquist dummy route yet again. In lieu of the freaky looking SAW puppet we this time get "Billy", a ventriloquist dummy that looks like Charlie McCarthy's creepy cosmopolitan cousin. The movie really isn't about the dummy coming to life and killing people, although had it been it really wouldn't have made things any better or worse. In reality, DEAD SILENCE is just a failed attempt to create a new Freddy Krueger.

With DEAD SILENCE James Wan has dumped the movies DARKNESS FALLS, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, MAGIC, and THE TINGLER into a giant movie blender in hopes of creating a nu horror meets Hammer horror daiquiri. The DARKNESS FALLS aspect comes in the form of Mary Shaw, the ghost of a murdered ventriloquist (From the 1920's? 1930's? 1940's? 1950's? I don't recall a specific date ever being established) who has been the subject of local superstition in the town she resided due to strange murders having occurred ever since her demise. The NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET aspect is that Mary Shaw murdered a child and was then lynched and murdered herself by members of the lead character's family, whom she now targets for revenge. The MAGIC aspect comes from "Billy," the ventriloquist dummy (as well as some other dummies that turn up, including Donnie Wahlberg) that occasionally appears to develop a life all of its own. And THE TINGLER side of the film... To be fair, it's really more of a reverse TINGLER. In that classic 1950's Vincent Price fright flick screaming was the only thing that could save you from the title menace; with DEAD SILENCE if you scream when Mary Shaw's spirit is present then, and seemingly only then, can she kill you - by ripping out your tongue and leaving your corpse looking like Garrett Morris at the end of THE STUFF.

I can't believe I ate the whoooole thing

Not sure how some strange supernatural bylaw came about mandating that only screaming is what permits her ghost to mutilate you. Is like some sort of trade-off you have to make with whatever supernatural force allows you to come back as a demonic mass murderer? Does Satan say, "Sure, I'll let you go back and kill in the form of a phantasm, but here's the catch: you can't kill them unless they scream. Because, you know, you used to be ventriloquist. It's both thematic and ironic." I, personally, plan to make a similar deal with the devil after I'm gone, only in my case, whenever someone says that they thought the Tri-Star GODZILLA movie was actually good, I appear and kill them my super bad breath.

The more you'd think about it the more you'd think given the film's title and the gimmicky premise of an evil ventriloquist's poltergeist, making any noise above a whisper would be punishable by death, not screaming. Nope, only if you scream. Otherwise, seems Mary Shaw can only try and scare you into screaming, but not physically harm you. Stupid supernatural rules and regulations; she really should contact her union rep.

You can also tell when Mary Shaw is present because the soundtrack goes abruptly silent. I will say it was the most eerily effective gimmick Wan would use; at least it was until even this gimmick became formulaic. It doesn't take long before you figure out any audible hush of this type will quickly be followed up by some sort of ghostly scream or a loud crash on the soundtrack. As we all know from watching modern horror films, loud noises = supreme terror!

I take back the whole GODZILLA thing. I'm going to come back as supernatural murderer who sneaks up on bad horror filmmakers and pop a blown-up paper bag right behind their head. If they make a peep, jump, or seem startled in the slightest - I kill 'em. Oh, yeah. Simon West better hope I don't pass away anytime soon 'cause I'm comin' for him first.

The lead character in DEAD SILENCE is just a guy. In fact, that's all I'm going to refer to him as throughout this review. He has no character; he's just a guy.

Just A Guy and Just His Wife are at home in their big city apartment when a knock at the door reveals that someone has sent Just A Guy a package containing a somewhat sinister-looking ventriloquist dummy named Billy. They both find it odd that this was sent to them with nothing included to tell them as to who sent it to them or why. They just laugh it off and then he's off to get them some Chinese takeout for dinner, while she stays behind to become the first victim.

Since the cops naturally assume Just A Guy murdered Just His Wife, in comes Donnie Wahlberg who appeared to be channeling Kevin Dillon's Entourage character if Kevin Dillon's Entourage character were ever to be cast in the role of Mike Hammer. Wahlberg's police detective plays more like a private dick from the most clichéd dimestore detective novel ever written short of having him sit in an office providing voiceover narration of his daily life:

"It was just another boring day at the office until he walked through my door. He was an average Joe, an ordinary guy, not an ounce of personality flowed through his veins. His wife was just murdered and the cops think he did it. But that's when things get strange. He says a dummy did it, or maybe the ghost of a dead ventriloquist who can manifest herself by using the dummy as a vessel. I thought he was plum crackers at first, but he was so convinced. I told him I don't believe in ghosts but then he told me he was willing to pay cash. Now I'm a believer too."

Something along those lines... I'm not good with the Mickey Spillane stuff. Wan clearly isn't either. A running gag will have the cop constantly whipping out his electric razor to shave his stubble, even when he's in the middle of interrogating a murder suspect. This character comes across as such an old school gumshoe that I'm just going to start referring to his character from now on as Gumshoe.

So Gumshoe is convinced Just A Guy killed his wife and Just A Guy keeps insisting that whoever sent him the dummy either did it or knows who did. He certainly doesn't help prove his innocence by babbling about an old ghost story from his hometown about the vengeful spirit of a dead ventriloquist who's said to rip out the tongues of people that scream in her presence. The movie works overtime trying to create a new "One… Two… Freddy's coming for you…" out of this nursery rhyme about Mary Shaw, but it isn't anywhere near as memorable. That nursery rhyme probably started out as the script's logline for all I know.

Just A Guy isn't being charged at this time and is allowed to leave. Just A Guy questions Gumshoe's competency as a cop on the way out of the station. I found it hard not to disagree with his assessment considering the police didn't even bother to take the dummy into evidence; if nothing else it would at least be worth dusting for prints. Of course, had they done so Just A Guy wouldn't have been able to find the Mary Shaw logo in its case and take the dummy with him when he travels back home to try and solve the mystery of his wife's murder.

One's a brash young cop from the streets who likes living on the edge. The other a puppet who likes the finer things in life and doing things by the book. To clean up these streets they have to first learn to get along with one another. This fall on ABC... BILLY & HUTCH

Now here's where the movie first lost me.

Just A Guy drives back to his hometown with the dummy propped up in the backseat as opposed to its carrying case or the trunk of the car like any sane person would. He didn't even seem to bother bringing the case it was sent to him in. A little later he'll be driving around with the dummy seated in the passenger seat. Then again, had he kept the dummy in the case we would have been denied the 10,000 shots of the dummy's eyes slowly moving on their own. I'm sorry but we're in the year 2007 and repeatedly focusing on close-ups of a ventriloquist dummy's eyes moving on their own is something that really should be relegated to R.L. Stine material by now.

Gumshoe will follow him Just A Guy to his hometown. Gotta keep an eye on his prime suspect, you know.

Welcome to Raven's Fair, USA - another one of those out in the boondocks, stuck in a time warp, small towns where virtually nobody seems to live and every building looks like it's been abandoned for decades. The whole town looks and feels positively archaic, as if we've just traveled back in time by at least 50 years.

It was around this time that it struck me the whole movie should have been a period film and not set in the 21st century. Whether or not James Wan originally intended for DEAD SILENCE to be a gothic DARK SHADOWS-esque horror flick I do not know; the dueling tone of the modern and gothic settings and characters, some of which feel like they're too are caricatures from the past, definitely does not mesh at all.

The only people that seem to still live in Raven's Fair are Just A Guy's wheelchair-bound (seemingly quadriplegic) dad, the hot step mom he didn't even know he had, and the all-knowing old person (legally required in movies of this sort) with his own senile (more like insane) old bat of a wife who lives in such constant fear of Mary Shaw that she forever rambles on crazily about how Shaw's ghost is coming to get her. What makes this all the more amusing is that in a confrontation later on with Gumshoe, the cop with the fetish for forever shaving his facial follicles will claim that he's interviewed other townspeople about Mary Shaw and none of them have ever heard of the woman in question. What other townspeople? Who were these other townspeople and where are they hiding?

And, boy, Gumshoe really must be a lousy detective because this conversation occurs after he's already followed Just A Guy to the cemetery to dig up the dummy Just A Guy re-buried in the special burial area set aside for all 101 of Mary Shaw's ventriloquist dolls, scenically located behind the gigantic tombstone with the name "MARY SHAW" written on it in huge letters. To paraphrase the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons, "Worst cop ever!"

The dude with his hand up my backside once sang "Hangin' Tough" and he thinks I'm the dummy?

Just A Guy's dad is apparently loaded given that he lives in a huge gated home that looks like the place Norman Bates would buy if he ever won the lottery. Plus, dad's got a hot young trophy wife, another surefire sign of being a rich old coot. That really hot young trophy wife, who I will know simply refer to as "Trophy Wife" from here on out, joyfully greets Just A Guy at the door as if he were the kid brother that she hadn't seen in years and not like the estranged stepson she'd never met. Just A Guy goes upstairs to see dear old dad, who I will simply refer to as "Dad". Sorry, don't have any snarky nickname for him. Just A Guy will be surprised to discover that his once combative and commanding Dad is now a meek man wheelchair bound from a stroke he'd suffered two years earlier.

His wheelchair-bound father is himself dressed like he could be a ventriloquist dummy and even speaks in a stilted, deliberate, puppet-like manner. My instant reaction when Dad appeared on-screen was this weird feeling that it were setting it up to be revealed that he was a human ventriloquist dummy being manipulated somehow by Mary Shaw. I quickly dismissed that notion because as too obvious, not to mention dumb. Dopey as DEAD SILENCE this notion just seemed too far-fetched. Sigh.

The relationship between Just A Guy and Dad was apparently a stormy one. I use the word "apparently" here because specific reasons their relationship was turbulent are only hinted at: vague arguing, talk of bitter feelings, and a brief rant by Just A Guy about Dad's many ex-wives and his habit for having their image painted over in family portraits after the marriages went south. This is a major faux pas on the part of Wan since, as we'll come to learn, the whole damn Mary Shaw aspect of the story is tied in to Just A Guy's family. We'll get to that in just one second. When dad eventually tells son that he knows he’s hated him for sending him away as a child but assures him he only did so to keep Mary Shaw’s phantasm from getting him, this was the first we’d heard of this crucial piece in their sour relationship.

Again, this is the ultimate Achilles’ heel of DEAD SILENCE and the thing I feel sinks it more than anything else. The whole film hinges on two backstories: Mary Shaw’s and the relationship between Just A Guy and his dominating father. The backstory regarding Just A Guy and Just His Dad is Just An Afterthought and we only get bits and pieces of Mary Shaw's backstory, certainly not enough to explain why she would become a homicidal specter with magic powers.

Mary Shaw's backstory in a nutshell: a creepy old lady who was a star ventriloquist who played to sellout crowds in the town theater decades earlier - though from the flashback sequences you'd swear it was the turn-of-the-last century - turned into a killer because she didn't like getting heckled on stage by a snot nosed brat. This kid heckled her during one of her performances and Mary responded by kidnapping the kid days later, murdering him, and turning his corpse into a marionette. In retrospect, those guys that heckled Michael Richards got off easy just having racial slurs hurled their way.

Ever wondered what really became of that kid from the PROBLEM CHILD movies?

A posse of townspeople then gave Mary Shaw the Fred Krueger treatment, specifically members of Just A Guy's Dad's family. Shaw's last request was for the town mortician to bury all 101 of her ventriloquist dolls and transform her corpse into a ventriloquist puppet herself. Why transform herself into a puppet? I don't know; my guess is because she knew even before her lynching that just coming back as a ghost who looks like the geriatric madame of a burlesque house wouldn't be frightening enough given that her whole post-mortem murder spree hinges on making people scream and thus she needed to scary herself up. That's really some good foresight on her part.

I can't figure out why she'd be so pissed to come back from the dead seeking vengeance given this town was kind enough to honor both of the final wishes of a child murderer and even further honored her memory with a personalized nursery rhyme. They may have started to regret this once the townspeople began turning up dead with their tongues ripped out.

And let us not forget Mary Shaw's secondary fetish: killing whole families and leaving them posed for a family portrait with their tongues ripped out, a gimmick explained by her desire to kill off the bloodlines and take away the voice of those that silenced hers. I never understood that part or how so many families in one town could fall victim and word not get out to the outside world. That's the sort of sensationalistic story Geraldo Rivera would kill for.

Now notice that nowhere in that last paragraph did you get any kind of explanation as to why Mary Shaw was psycho bitch who would kidnap and murder a juvenile heckler, physically transform him into a puppet, and then treat his corpse like it was one of her children. That's because not anywhere in the film do you get that explanation. It's like if Freddy Krueger were just an honest Joe who one day crossed paths with a kid who made fun of his job and so he decided to murder the kid, and then the town lynched him and he decided to comeback as a supernatural killer. Wouldn't be quite as compelling an origin, would it?

Speaking of comebacks, Just A Guy has come back to Raven Fair not just to solve his wife's murder, but also to bury her. Was she even from Raven's Fair? This was never established outside of her briefly mumbling a bit of the Mary Shaw nursery rhyme before being slaughtered. Even if she was from Raven Fair, she apparently had no family of her own outside of Just A Guy as only he and Trophy Wife attended her burial. Once again, critical info gets left out.

But before burying her that all-knowing old man, who I will now simply refer to as "All-Knowing Old Man", has to prepare the corpse since he just happens to be the town mortician. As an extra added bonus, it was his father who prepared the ventrili-corpse of Mary Shaw. I smell a flashback in the works. Upon unzipping the body bag containing Just His Wife and finding a sight he's all-too-familiar with, he immediately begins agonizingly muttering like, "Not again!" before snapping a black & white photo of her corpse with an old time flash camera to add to his scrapbook of other open-mouthed, tongue-deprived corpses that Mary Shaw has racked up in Raven Fair over the decades. Make a note never to let this guy show you his vacation pictures.

Just A Guy has a chance encounter at the cemetery with the old man's batshit crazy old hag of a wife, who I will from here on out simply refer to as "Old Batty". Old Batty goes on and on about how he must bury the dummy in the cemetery with Mary Shaw's other dummies - or else. I think given everything that has already happened to him, we're already past the point of making "or else" threats. He'll never get to find out exactly what Old Batty meant by "or else" because All-Knowing Old Guy rushes in to assure him that his beloved Old Batty is indeed just that and should be ignored. Immediately afterwards, I mean we're not even talking two seconds later, Just A Guy turns around and discovers the enormous ivy-covered tombstone for the one and only Mary Shaw.

Isn't it great how things just work out so nice and tidy like that? It's like when I wonder to myself if the FX Network is running THE GREEN MILE again and sure enough, right there on the cable guide: THE GREEN MILE is on in twenty minutes. It's like magic.

DEAD SILENCE had already lost me by this point. You either buy into the premise or you don't. I didn't. By the time we got Just A Guy burying the dummy in the cemetery in the middle of the night I was just sitting in my seat in disbelief as to just how dumb this all was. Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! The archaic design of the town, the uneven tone that couldn't seem to decide whether or not it was trying to be campy or serious or both, Wahlberg's rent-a-cop with the pocket razor, the forever wandering eyes of the dummy, the wheelchair bound dad who talks like he could be a dummy, the barrage of loud noise jump scares masquerading as actual suspense: just plain dumb, every last bit of it.

No scene typifies that dumb factor more than that when Just A Guy goes to investigate the old abandoned theater where Mary Shaw used to perform at and live in. This massive theater is now covered in more moss than a Mayan ruin. Oh, and there's a moat too. Abandoned for only half a century? You'd think this theater had been lost for centuries from the looks of it. Inside it just looks like a decrepit building that's been abandoned for decades but on the outside it looks like an Allan Quartermain wet dream come true. When Just A Guy is forced to return to the building at night later on, the foggy lantern-lit moat gives the whole thing a look that made me wonder when Sherlock Holmes would arrive. Instead Gumshoe turns up to do some fraidy cat comedy before getting de-tongue-ified. Admittedly, his is a great death scene that would have been even greater had it happened much earlier in the film.

The old theatre from DEAD SILENCE or Mr. Slate's summer residence?

Inside the place he'll find a book detailing Mary Shaw's plans to construct a dummy that looks, feels, and acts like a real live person. Nothing like telegraphing your surprise twist ending well in advance.

And the very second we first saw this old abandoned theater I knew deep down that it would be going up in flames before the end of the movie. Sure enough…

I could see what kind of movie Wan was trying to make and I could even see it working - just not in the movie he made. This needed some massive rewrites. I'm talking full scale restructuring of the whole damn script. He needed to get a better grasp on the film's tone, he needed to flesh out characters as more that just one-dimensional bores and played-out stereotypes, and explaining the backstory would have been priority number one. And personally I would have preferred Wan not constantly relying on cheap loud noise jump scares. A period setting would also have greatly helped.

I'm not the least bit surprised DEAD SILENCE got many good reviews from horror fans. If nothing else, at least story-wise it was a bit different from most of the horror flicks we get these days. Still... Good this is not. Hell, I write for a horror website and I'll be the first to come right out and say horror movie fans are amongst the easiest to please fan base out there, aside from porn aficionados. Overall, I say unless you're really creeped out by ventriloquist dummies, DEAD SILENCE is just an even more dumbed down retread of DARKNESS FALLS with better atmosphere, a truly awesome score, and a lot more wasted potential.

Oh, the finale... Allow me to spoil the big twist ending. Ready?

Dad was indeed a ventrili-corpse all along. Trophy Wife turns out to have been working him the whole time; exactly how is revealed using the modern surprise twist ending flashback technique that shows us all the clues we missed along the way in the form of a rapid-fire montage; or in the case of the SAW films, desperate attempts to try and convince us that any of what happened adds up in the end. Trophy Wife then reveals herself to be that living dummy described in the book and remember that Mary Shaw can possess her dummies. Just A Guy screams. I groan. I suspect that other guy in the theater began his obscenity laden tirade at that very moment. The movie then ends with Mary Shaw uttering the line, "Who's the dummy now?" I resisted the urge to raise my hand.

IN MEMORY OF FORMER FIRST LADY OF MISSISSIPPI PAT FORDICE

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE HALLOWEEN 666: CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS