James Wan’s Ventriloquist Horror Flick Is Able to Be Rediscovered

In 2007, James Wan was a horror up-and-comer who’d scored an enormous hit with 2004’s Saw, which had by then already launched its first two sequels with a 3rd on the best way. However earlier than Insidious and The Conjuring he made a few one-offs: the Kevin Bacon vigilante thriller Demise Sentence, and the ventriloquist horror story Lifeless Silence.

The latter was simply added to Shudder, and although it was a bust 18 years in the past, it’s now a enjoyable one to revisit—particularly making an allowance for all that Wan and his frequent collaborator Leigh Whannell, who scripted Lifeless Silence, have achieved since then. Although they had been nonetheless simply the Noticed guys on the time, you may simply pick sure narrative decisions and imagery that may later turn out to be touchstones of their work.

Noticed‘s game-obsessed Jigsaw puppet was already entered into the file forward of Lifeless Silence, and it’s echoed right here in Billy, the principle ventriloquist dummy in a film that provides him loads of evil toy back-ups. The white face, the ghoulishly hinged jaw, and the fondness for bow ties are all shared traits, although Billy has luminous blue eyes that peer round in sinister methods the viewers notices far earlier than the characters do.

Wan is notably an enormous fan of cursed objects; the Conjuring cinematic universe is constructed round them. It will possibly’t be a coincidence that Annabelle—a doll much more ghastly than Billy—is essentially the most charismatic escapee from Ed and Lorraine Warren’s stash of occult treasures. (Wan’s Instagram deal with? “Creepypuppet“.)

Lifeless Silence additionally hints at stylistic parts that may enter Wan’s later work, with eerie sound design that performs up silence as a lot as shrieks, in addition to bounce scares that predate the livid old-lady entity in Insidious, in addition to the Nun’s fondness for dramatically rising from the shadows… then contorting her face to convey out her demonic facet.

You can also’t ignore the truth that Noticed mainstay Donnie Wahlberg can be in Lifeless Silence, taking part in a well-recognized type of scruffy police detective. This model of the character is extra skeptical than the corrupt cop in Noticed; he’s keen on issuing warnings like “You don’t wish to make me chase you!” as he races after the protagonist into an deserted theater stuffed with haunted dolls. He additionally has a bizarre obsession along with his battery-operated razor, a tic that leads nowhere regardless of being foregrounded as a key character trait.

Lifeless Silence’s set-up additionally hints at Wan supernatural tales to come back, with a malevolent determine up to now poking its approach throughout generations to verify a curse by no means dies. Sadly the principle character, Jamie—Ryan Kwanten, simply previous to True Blood—isn’t as compelling because the central figures in Insidious or The Conjuring. He’s simply type of an unmemorable dude, although he’s a decided one. When his spouse dies in a fully hideous approach—the very night time a ventriloquist dummy is delivered to their residence from an unknown sender—he heads straight to his hometown, the place his estranged father (Bob Gunton) lives along with his suspiciously younger and glamorous new spouse (Amber Valletta).

Although Lifeless Silence takes place in 2007, it’s set in a actuality seemingly devoid of cell telephones and Google searches. There are land traces galore, and historic exposition comes courtesy of a mortician’s prolonged flashback in addition to a literal scrapbook that Jamie occurs to come back throughout. There’s additionally a nursery rhyme that references the city’s boogeyman determine: a theater performer named Mary Shaw so obsessive about the dolls in her act she insisted they be buried along with her… every with their very own tiny coffin and grave marker.

There’s much more to the backstory that surfaces as Jamie digs deeper—together with a decades-old chilly case involving a lacking baby, and an prolonged bit about tongues being ripped out that looks as if it ought to tie into the “throwing your voice” a part of ventriloquism, however the particulars don’t fairly come collectively there.

Nonetheless, “Watch out! When you go on the lookout for solutions, you simply may discover them” is the recommendation the mortician passes on to Jamie (naturally, he by no means even considers abiding by that), and Lifeless Silence agreeably ties up most of its plot threads by the tip.

It additionally has an absolute scream of a twist ending that makes you suppose maybe, simply perhaps, Wan and Whannell had campier ambitions for this story. Because it performs out onscreen, Lifeless Silence skews a bit of an excessive amount of towards taking itself too significantly, particularly contemplating the sheer quantity of dolls concerned. It’s additionally filmed with a relentlessly dour blue-tinged filter, which is perhaps the best sin dedicated right here, in addition to what marks it so clearly as a mid-2000s relic.

When you don’t thoughts turning up the brightness to ease that gloom, although, you may have a jolly good time watching this one. Don’t be shocked when you have the urge to look at just a few extra Wan flicks when you’re achieved.

Lifeless Silence is now streaming on Shudder.

Need extra io9 information? Take a look at when to anticipate the most recent Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on film and TV, and the whole lot it’s worthwhile to learn about the way forward for Doctor Who.