Dead Silence

DEAD SILENCE (2007) - Mar. 16, 2007 (S)
A reasonably well made but essentially mediocre horror film about a sinister ghost ventriloquist and her sinister dummies. A big problem here is that it's hard to be too scared of a ventriloquist's dummy, so some of the scenes that are supposed to be scary come off more silly than anything else. I liked the intro and the conclusion (though it got a bit over-the-top towards the end), but the whole mid-section was a bit iffy. It was basically just the main character wandering around a small town trying to solve the mystery behind the dolls, which wasn't all that interesting. Every now and then Donnie Wahlberg popped up and livened things up considerably -- he stole every scene he was in as a somewhat eccentric detective who always seems to be shaving. The film was clearly directed by James Wan -- stylistically speaking it looked a lot like Saw, plus he pretty blatantly stole from himself, as the film's conclusion is really similar to the one from Saw. **