Whenever she shows up, time slows down and sound – whether it be a ticking clock or a steaming tea kettle – becomes muted, an effective trick that’s always paid off instead of abused. Even the simple idea that one cannot scream in her presence (otherwise she kills them) is pretty clever, forcibly challenging the standard run-and-scream conventions that have been the downfall of countless horror movie victims. In essence, everything involving Shaw, whether it’s her general appearance, her history, her puppets, or the “rules” in dealing with her, remains the best thing to come out of Dead Silence, and it’s lamentable that she’s been overshadowed by other more well-known “scary” figures from Wan’s subsequent films like the Lipstick-Face Demon from Insidious or Annabelle from The Conjuring franchise.
Again, outside of Shaw, the film doesn’t get by on its other characters or by providing any real narrative substance, but by the big moments and twists it’s so eager to keep getting to. Fortunately, they’re pretty entertaining for what they are, even if it’s unfortunate that Wan and his team couldn’t construct an overall better film around them. For instance, a scene in which a character is lured into an underground nook while looking for his wife only to find himself trapped with Shaw is wonderfully tense, existing as a solid precursor to some of the claustrophobic terror present in some of Wan’s more recent work.
A trip to Shaw’s old theatre – which should be noted is brought to life by some pretty cool set design – is ripe with atmosphere, culminating in an entire sequence of moments that involve the unveiling of the truth about what happened to the boy Shaw was accused of killing, an entire wall of puppets looking in the direction of their “mother,” and a conversation between Jamie and an unsettling clown puppet where the reason why Lisa was killed is laid out only for Shaw herself to show up in quite a memorable fashion. And, of course, there’s a big twist in the film’s final moments that’s so slickly performed that it manages to still surprise even in spite of the fact that, in retrospect, it could’ve packed an even bigger punch had we again been afforded more time getting to know these characters.
I also can’t help but mention that Charlie Clouser’s primary theme for the film here is pretty good. Whereas I criticized his work on Death Sentence, his style compliments Dead Silence a lot better, gifting the movie with a theme that’s personally managed to stick with me over the last decade. It’s not quite on par with his popular theme for the Saw franchise, but it’s great regardless, and would’ve been a perfect sound had the character of Mary Shaw been given the chance to carry a franchise of her own.
Circling back to where we started, I still can’t say that 2007 was a perfect year for Wan. Neither Death Sentence nor Dead Silence are truly quality works, but they’re films that Wan clearly needed to get out of his system. Simply in terms of Dead Silence, it’s easy to see Wan still growing out of some of his Saw tricks – like the occasional, needless frenetic editing – on his way to calming down a bit as we’ve seen with, say, The Conjuring films, but you can also see him honing his other skills, like his ability to milk tension for everything it’s worth.
It’s a testament to how Wan’s clear potential as a filmmaker was back in 2007 that he managed to overcome a paper-thin script and an absolute lack of characterization to assemble a final product that’s still an entertaining, if truly imperfect, trip through a funhouse. It’s obviously nowhere near his best work, but it’s a necessary one that allowed him to find his footing on his journey from Saw to Insidious, and at the end of the day, if Dead Silence‘s biggest sin is that it’s more harmless than egregious, that’s not really a bad thing.