Dead Silence

Dead Silence is a 2007 American supernatural horror film directed by James Wan and written by Leigh Whannell. The film stars Ryan Kwanten as Jamie Ashen, a young widower returning to his hometown to search for answers to his wife's death. It also stars Amber Valletta, Donnie Wahlberg, and Bob Gunton. Dead Silence was theatrically released in the United States on March 16, 2007, by Universal Pictures. The film was dedicated to Gregg Hoffman. Plot Jamie Ashen and his wife Lisa receive an anonymous gift of a ventriloquist doll called "Billy". When Jamie goes out, a figure kills Lisa. Jamie returns to find that her tongue has been cut off; he is arrested for presumably killing her. After Jamie is released by police 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. Returning to Raven's Fair, now old and rundown, Jamie visits his estranged, wheelchair-bound father Edward, and his much-younger wife, Ella. He arranges for Lisa's funeral with the help of local mortician Henry Walker. Henry's senile wife, Marion, urges him to bury Billy. Jamie does so but is confronted by Lipton, who followed Jamie and finds his actions suspicious. Henry explains that Mary Shaw was publicly humiliated when a young boy named Michael rudely claimed that he could see her lips moving during one of her performances. Some weeks later, Michael disappeared, and his family blamed it on Mary and lynched her. Mary's last wish was to have her body turned into a doll and buried with her collection of dolls, who she called her children. Henry, then a child, saw Shaw (after she was turned into a dummy) rise up, but was spared thanks to his silence, because Mary only kills those who scream when exposed to her true appearance. Jamie finds out that Michael, who actually was murdered by Mary Shaw, was his great-uncle. The Ashen family forced Mary to scream and silenced her by cutting her tongue out; she has since been seeking revenge against their bloodline by killing them the same way.