DEAD SILENCE (2007)

Ravens Fair is a town people come from, not a place they go to. Jamie Ashen and his wife Lisa think they've put their memories of the town behind them, but they're wrong. One dark and stormy night Jamie and Lisa are at home in their apartment when the doorbell rings and Jamie finds a box with no postage or return address. Inside is a ventriloquist's dummy. Jamie and Lisa have many memories about such dolls, all of them bad. When they were children they heard all the stories about Mary Shaw, who had been wildly successful as a ventriloquist and built a large theatre (appropriately called the Guingol) in Ravens Fair but was killed by an angry mob when children started disappearing from the town.
A dark and stormy night. An unpleasant reminder of the past. So what does Jamie do? The most logical thing: leave Lisa alone in the apartment while he goes out in the rain to get Chinese takeout. When he comes home he finds Lisa brutally murdered, her tongue ripped out and her mouth wide open in a silent scream. Not surprisingly the police are underwhelmed by Jamie's story about vengeful ghosts and dolls that move of their own free will. Detective Lipton- a wonderfully deranged performance from Donnie Walhberg- tells Jamie that there's only one suspect in the case: Jamie. Lipton doesn't believe in ghosts.

Jamie, followed closely (and, it turns out, fortunately) by Detective Lipton, returns to Ravens Fair to bury Lisa. Not only does Jamie carry the doll with him, but it rides in the back seat. Jamie finds his wheelchair bound father remarried to the gorgeous and much younger Ella. The town has decayed to a point where it's about two notches away from Silent Hill: the stores are empty, for sale signs on all the buildings, a scene of desolation. If Jamie were smart he'd bury Lisa and head back to the city, with or without the doll. Of course that would leave us with a major studio release with a running time of maybe twenty minutes. So Jamie tries to find the answer to his wife's murder and unravel the mystery binding him and his family to the doomed town.
There is violence and gore in Dead Silence but it's used with much restraint. To me that's a selling point in the film's favor; others might realize that if they go in search of a bloodbath they're going to be disappointed. What Dead Silence offers is atmosphere and lots of genuine suspense, with surprisingly well rounded characters. And the sets, costumes, special effects, cinematography, and sound and visual effects are top notch. The film looks as if a huge amount of money was spent on it, but if Universal expects to start a Mary Shaw franchise the way that we've seen Freddy, Jason, and Michael become product lines (something Universal very profitably did with Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy) it's just not going to happen. A prequel would be a possibility, but the backstory is very effectively told in flashbacks that don't leave a lot of open issues. If you want something more substantial than a butcher in a basement, Dead Silence is a dead solid piece of work.