Dead Silence

A mysterious puppet arrives in the mail to a lovely young couple. Strange little puppet it is, all garmented in a little tuxedo with a wide grin on his face. The wife finds it cute; the man is somewhat nervous about it. The man leaves the house on a grocery run.
Then, sh*t hits the fan.
The puppet's eyes move everyonce in a while. It's jaw opens and closes. The wife is getting creeped out. Then tons of household appliances start screwing up, the woman is scared but the puppet is always waiting for her when she least expects it. Everything goes silent.
Dead Silent.

The above intro sounds pretty awesome, and indeed it was in this low-budget film from the directors of SAW. Too bad the rest of the movie just doesn't quite cut it. The film is centered around a character that's so forgettable, I can't quite remember what his name was. His wife was murdered by a puppet, her tounge ripped out, and he's being blamed for it. Now he has to figure out the story behind the spooky puppet of a ventriloquist named Mary Shaw.

Beware the stare of Mary Shaw. Or she'll rip yo friggin' tounge out.
The plot is just a typical ghost story, nothing exciting there. Speaking of exciting, the movie packs plenty of cheap scares. Now, I loves me a good scare, but sometimes they reuse the same scare tactic multiple times. This becomes more of an annoyance than a thrill. Sometimes it even gets laughable, but they did deliver a few good 'n' scary scenes. The plot, as I mentioned before, is just "meh," but there is a very nice twist at the end.
The movie also shoves a stupid "children's poem" down your throat about Mary Shaw that doesn't even rhyme, and just gets tiresome.

Good acting, and the lack thereof.
The acting in Dead Silence is awful. Just awful. The already-unoriginal characters have terrible dialouge, and the way the actors say them is at times cringe-worthy. Even for a low-budget movie like this, it's bad.

Silence.
An interesting gimmick in the film is that whenever something bad happens, everything goes silent. It's a nice touch. The rest of the audio is just okay, nothing ever bad, but nothing very memorable either.

Woah, this is from the guys that made SAW?
This is not a "torture-porn" movie like the SAW creators' usual efforts. In fact, it's not a gorey movie at all, which is a good thing. It's a nice break from the usual blood 'n' guts thrillers out there. The little special effects used aren't very good, but the are far and few between.

The Verdict
This film is just okay. Some good scenes, some awful ones, good design, bad acting. It kind of evens itself out. If you want some cheap thrills, go ahead and get it, it's going for $0.01 on Amazon.com. If you want a good movie, though, you'd best leave this one silent.
4.5/10