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.

Jamie Ashen and his wife Lisa receive an anonymous gift of a ventriloquist doll called "Billy".

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 using father Edward, and his much-younger wife, Ella.

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.

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.

At Mary's old theater, Jamie and Lipton discover 100 of the dolls in their display case, along with Michael's body, which had been turned into a marionette.

Mary flips through a photo album of her victims: Lisa, Henry, Lipton, Edward, Ella and Jamie.

The site's critical consensus reads, "More tasteful than recent slasher flicks, but Dead Silence is undone by boring characters, bland dialogue, and an unnecessary and obvious twist ending.

Whannell concludes the post with a description of the key lessons that were learned following the Dead Silence experience:

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.