After ‘Saw,’ James Wan & Leigh Whannell Gave Us a Modern Gothic Horror

The Big Picture

• Wan and Whannell’s horror film
  Dead Silence
  showcases their early exploration of gothic horror and scary dolls in a decaying theater setting.
• The movie may not have been well-received, but it laid the groundwork for the duo’s later successful projects like
  Insidious
  and
  The Conjuring
  .
• Despite its flaws,
  Dead Silence
  offers inventive jump scares, a twisted plot, and a grim ending that sets it apart as a unique entry in Wan and Whannell’s filmography.

James Wan and Leigh Whannell are the Aussie duo who took Hollywood by storm with two popular horror franchises. 2004’s Saw was deemed an early entry in the torture porn subgenre, despite this directorial debut by Wan and screenwriting debut by Whannell being closer to a psychological thriller than a gory shocker. In 2011, Insidious saw the director and writer duo have fun in supernatural terror with a focus on intense jump scares over grisly violence. New sequels for both are on the way. In between the first installments of the two franchises, was Dead Silence, a 2007 horror movie that was a dud with critics and moviegoers. It’s not beloved by everyone, not even Wan or Leigh Whannell, themselves, but coming after Saw, it has many elements the duo fine-tuned when they did Insidious, and Wan then expanded upon in The Conjuring and Malignant. Dead Silence‘s dreary atmosphere would please Edgar Allan Poe, with old-school gothic horror and scary dolls in the town of Ravens Fair before Annabelle caused doll sales to decline (probably) and astral projection had “Travelers” step into the Further.

What Is ‘Dead Silence’ About?

Jamie (Ryan Kwanten) and his wife Lisa (Laura Regan) receive a surprise package one rainy night and unwrap it to see they have been gifted an old dummy named Billy. Within a few hours, Lisa is brutally murdered. From a clue on the package, Jamie returns to his hometown of Ravens Fair to uncover who sent the dummy and why. His return brings him back to his estranged father (Bob Gunton), his younger stepmother, Ella (Amber Valletta), and the local coroner afraid of the town’s dark history. There is good reason to be, where a ghost story warns residents: “Beware the stare of Mary Shaw. She had no children, only dolls. And if you see her in your dreams, make sure you never ever scream.” Jamie soon learns it holds a terrible truth.

Right away, fans of Saw and Insidious will spot a familiar plot device that pushes Jamie forward, even if viewers yell at the screen for him to turn back. Two strangers have their legs chained to a pipe in a dirty bathroom. Parents grapple with the connection between their haunted house and their child’s unexplained coma. A mystery drives characters forward in the horror films Wan and Whannell have made together. This is present in Dead Silence too. While a rational person would leave ASAP, Jamie has no choice but to uncover the origins of Billy the Dummy after his wife’s murder places him under suspicion by the police. But nowhere is safe, and viewers understand the scares they will be in for.

James Wan is known for jump scares in his horror projects. Used cheaply, the loud jolt overstays its welcome quickly. Wan knows how to deliver the best version of the jump scare in Dead Silence, where an effective audio trick has everything go quiet. Alone in the apartment, Lisa hears the hiss of the tea kettle lower and lower, until it’s gone. The only sound the doomed wife hears is what Mary Shaw (Judith Roberts) brings with Billy. She doesn’t just kill her victims, she rips out their tongues and steals their voices. A clever joke pointed at the audience because if they scream at the screen, they set themselves up to be Shaw’s next victim.

Leigh Whannell and James Wan Weren’t Happy With ‘Dead Silence’

Inventive scares like this are a telling sign that Wan and Whannell had the best of intentions, but the making of Dead Silence hit bumps in the road. When it was released, it made $22 million against a $20 million budget, and critics and audience reactions weren’t favorable. In 2011, Whannell credited the movie as “the worst experience I’ve ever had in this craaaaazy town of tinsel.” He forced himself to think of a story and Universal Pictures assigned script doctors to get the plot closer to what the studio wanted it to be. Wan was just as displeased with it, for what was his first studio film.

In a Hollywood Reporter interview, he said it was, “–me responding to the reaction that Saw was getting, meaning that people were harping on the torture aspect of Saw. So I made a very conscious decision to move away from that style of film and into something that was more of a haunted house, ghost story, which is a genre I love. But, of course, Saw made such a strong impression that it carried into Dead Silence.” Nevertheless, fans of Wan can notice the director’s creative flair in the visuals.

James Wan Was Inspired by Giallo and Hammer Horror Movies

Dead Silence isn’t a traditional giallo, the color scheme being a “dead” giveaway. Films in that Italian genre and titles inspired by it are saturated in color, with red representing the bloodshed that will be unleashed. Dead Silence is primarily a sullen blue-gray, except for spots of bleeding red from the bow tie around Billy’s neck, the shade of Jamie’s car, and a truly frightening scene in a hotel room at night. While Jamie tries to sleep, a buzzing outdoor sign flashes red light onto Billy, the dummy placed in the room’s corner. Viewers soon get a glimpse of Mary Shaw’s face behind a curtain, obscured just enough to have Jamie unsure if it was a dream.

Wan talked about the influences he put into this 2007 spookfest in an interview with JoBlo, “I’m sort of the stepson of Dario Argento – one he doesn’t even know about. I have such a love for that man’s work. In Dead Silence, I wasn’t really going for the giallo look, but it still comes through.” Wan continued in the interview to say, “--visually it owes a lot to both the old Italian horror and the British Hammer horror films.” The vintage logo for Universal Pictures that opens the movie makes it clear this is a throwback. And that second influence Wan mentioned comes alive in splendid gothic horror when Jamie traces clues to the abandoned, crumbling theatre in Ravens Fair.

Mary Shaw and Her Dummies Are Underrated Horror Villains

The set is much more baroque compared to the central locations in Saw and Insidious. It’s not a grimy bathroom dungeon; it’s not a foggy parallel universe like the Further. The closest might be the Lipstick-Face Demon’s lair, but if that appeared like a lavish penthouse in the ninth circle of hell, Dead Silence’s theater is a decaying place on Earth. It was once the home of Mary Shaw, where she put on stage performances with her ventriloquist darlings until the locals turned on her. Jamie can only explore the abandoned theater by crossing the surrounding moat by boat — it doesn’t get more gothic than that. While Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) used a creepy puppet (also called Billy) to deliver messages, Dead Silence makes Billy the stuff of nightmares.

There’s the slow creak of the eyes as it peers at passing characters that will make viewers relive the nagging feeling that someone is watching them. In the Hollywood Reporter interview, Wan revealed Poltergeist as a defining movie in his life, especially when it came to its clown doll, saying, “It definitely scarred me for life and made me terrified of dolls and clowns, but since then, I’ve become extremely fascinated by creepy dolls, as you can see in all my work. Wan’s fascination with tiny terrors is on full display here. Billy the Puppet in Saw is a voicebox for Jigsaw, and even Annabelle in the first Conjuring wasn’t the star just yet. But scares alone isn’t what Wan and Whannell stick to. A campy tone adds some fun to a story overloaded with B-movie ideas.

It’s Not a Bad Thing ‘Dead Silence’ Never Became a Franchise

The character that seems out of place is Donnie Wahlberg’s Detective Lipton. Lipton is the bumbling comic relief, giving Wahlberg the quirk of constantly shaving with an electric razor in vain, as he never seems to get rid of his facial hair. If his presence doesn’t work for everyone, Whannell found a stronger handle on this character trope with Specs (Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson) in Insidious, the bickering helpers of Elise (Lin Shaye). Detective Lipton is part of the absurdity in this gothic horror tale, where Mary Shaw’s backstory takes it up a notch by revealing she requested her corpse be turned into a doll. This is why the ending is bonkers, yet aligns with the lore that has been laid out.

Jamie finds out too late that his father has been dead the whole time he’s returned to Ravens Fair, turned into a ventriloquist dummy by Jamie’s stepmother, who is a “doll” created by Shaw for her spirit to possess. To match how fast this plot twist is thrown at Jamie is a kinetic montage similar to Saw that ends with Jamie finally screaming, exactly what the ghost story/poem warns you never to do. Unlike in Saw, and Insidious and their subsequence sequels, the monster wins in Dead Silence and no sequel can offer hope of defeating Mary Shaw. That’s one hell of a grim ending. The reveal of two human puppets should be considered a wild and worthy precursor to Patrick Wilson getting possessed by the Bride in Black and Malignant’s parasitic twin.

Because of the unpleasant experience for James Wan and Leigh Whannell, Dead Silence isn’t a perfect horror movie, but it shouldn’t be forgotten in their careers. It feels like a trial run before the pair’s work on Insidious, Wan’s studio hit with The Conjuring, and Whannell’s shift to directing with Upgrade and The Invisible Man. Their contemporary take on gothic horror does bring chilling moments, and fans of the pair can see the type of scares and characters they would develop in later, more successful projects.

Dead Silence is available to rent and buy on Amazon.

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