It's a wonderful reflection of the indiscriminate tastes of contemporary horror filmgoers that such an awkwardly plotted and derivative film has such staunch defenders. My expectations were at just the right level for a killer dummy film. Unfortunately, the film as a whole failed even to meet those standards (in much the same way SAW's egregious lapses in logic undermined its intriguing set-up). It's difficult to express how completely ridiculous it is to call my review "terrible", as though my lukewarm and literate reaction to the movie merited getting upset enough to critique the critique, as it were. Since we're trading views, however, a couple of decently executed set pieces and a lack of emphasis on CGI do not make a film "great". "Great" is an adjective which should be reserved for films which A)break new ground, B)leave the viewer engrossed in the experience long after the credits roll, C)feature a combination of consistently solid acting and coherent, compelling plot, or D)all of the above. It's hard to imagine any veteran filmgoer over the age of 15 watching the ham-fisted wheeling out of disparate plot points in this movie and calling it a "well told" story, just as it is difficult to imagine anyone applauding the innovation of a film which flagrantly steals its underlying premise from A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and several other superior films and is built around a fictional children's poem which sounds as though it were written by a guy in the marketing department on a cocktail napkin. While the film does have some creepy scenes, anyone frightened by the tale of Mary Shaw as related in said rhyme (indeed, anyone who did not find the verse awkward in the extreme) ought to stay away from horror films altogether. A good horror film should make you hesitate to enter a dark room later that night after getting home or make you lie awake thinking about it or, at the very least, make you revel in the carnage in true escapist fashion. DEAD SILENCE will do none of those things for anyone who's seen more than a handful of scary movies in their lifetime. A good horror film should NOT constantly remind you of other, better movies or hand out bits of bulky and unlikely exposition without any sense of timing and structure or slip from your mind mere moments after leaving the theater. DEAD SILENCE unfortunately does all three. I wanted to like it, folks. I really did. I was prepared for a simple, old-fashioned ghost/killer puppet story, not a classic or a cinematic masterpiece. But this movie simply has too many holes to even be much fun. It's a movie best viewed as a collection of clips on a horror film retrospective DVD, because in its entirety it showcases too many contrivances and logic gaps to remain afloat for long. Viewed on its own, it is severely flawed. Viewed with a working knowledge of countless other movies in this vein which are far superior, it is a complete waste of time.
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