Dead Silence

***Dead Silence*** is a 2007 American supernatural psychological horror film

## Synopsis

A young widower returns to his hometown to search for answers to his wife's murder, which may be linked to the ghost of a murdered ventriloquist.

## Plot

Jamie Ashen and his wife, Lisa, receive an anonymous gift of a ventriloquist doll called "Billy". While Lisa is playing with Billy, a figure approaches her, causing her to scream. Jamie finds her dead with her tongue cut out. After Jamie is released from custody by Detective Jim Lipton due to lack of evidence, he spots inside Billy's box a mysterious message about "Mary Shaw", a deceased ventriloquist from his hometown, Raven's Fair.

At Raven's Fair, Jamie visits his estranged, wealthy and wheelchair-bound father, Edward, and his much-younger wife, Ella, for information regarding Mary Shaw. Dismissing them as superstitions, Jamie arranges for Lisa's funeral with the help of a local mortician, Henry Walker. Jamie meets Henry's senile wife, Marion, who tells him of the danger of Mary and her puppet, Billy. After burying Billy, Jamie is confronted by Detective Lipton in his motel room, the latter still doubting Jamie, and digs up Billy, after Jamie leaves the cemetery where Mary Shaw and the rest of her dummies are buried.

Henry tells Jamie about Shaw. Shaw was a famous ventriloquist who was publicly humiliated when a boy, Michael, pointed to her moving mouth. Michael disappeared some weeks later, and his family blamed it on Shaw, and lynched her. Her last wish was to have her body turned into a dummy and buried with her 101 dolls. Henry, then the young son of the local mortician, saw Shaw (after she was turned to a dummy) rise up, but Henry was spared thanks to his having kept his mouth shut. This is because Shaw only takes her revenge by killing those who scream. Jamie finds out that Michael, the first victim, was his great uncle; the Ashen family were the ones who killed Shaw by cutting out her tongue, and she has been seeking revenge against their entire bloodline by killing them the same way.

Henry is killed by Shaw. Detective Lipton discovers that all of Shaw's dolls have been dug up. He informs Jamie, who receives a call from "Henry," asking him to go to Shaw's theatre. There, both Jamie and Detective Lipton discover 100 of the dolls lined up with Michael's body, which has been turned into a marionette. Through a clown-doll, Shaw reveals to Jamie that she killed his wife because she was pregnant with his son, thus killing any potential newborn of the Ashen family. Jamie and Lipton burn the theatre and all of Shaw's dolls, though in the process, Shaw successfully makes Detective Lipton scream and kills him.

Back at his father's residence, Jamie is confronted by Mary Shaw but he repels her by throwing Billy (the 101st and last of the remaining dummies) into the fireplace. He is horrified to learn that his father had already died a long time ago; the current "Edward" is the corpse converted into a doll controlled by Ella, who is the "perfect doll" for Shaw, created just before her death. He screams as Ella, possessed by Mary Shaw, lunges at him.

The film ends with Jamie reciting a nursery rhyme about Shaw and a photo album with human puppets is shown: Lisa, Henry, Detective Lipton, Edward, Ella, and Jamie himself.