Dead Silence 2007

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Wan and Whannell have a carnivalesque sense of fun and a sure instinct for recycling classic horror tropes, but their characters are so flat and their plotting so listless that this low-budget feature fails to generate much suspense. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: Even without the mechanized death that made the Saw movies such a sensation, it doesn't take long to realize that director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell are merely trying to replace one twisty, gimmicky franchise with another. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: This new movie is a more credible, less grisly act of filmmaking , but it's a less compelling exercise. It doesn't have the ruthless moral reasoning of the first two Saw pictures, however grotesque and specious that reasoning was. Read more

Scott Brown, Entertainment Weekly: Terrified of puppets? Enjoy being scared? Then you'll be half-satisfied with Dead Silence, a rote horror pantomime. Read more

John Monaghan, Detroit Free Press: Armed with a decent budget, director James Wan and co-screenwriter Leigh Wannell fashion at least a dozen sequences that are spooky even while they defy logic. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: Saw creators Leigh Whannell and James Wan know scary: all that stuff that heebie-jeebied you when you were a kid. (Or as Entertainment Weekly would say: Dead Silence is awash with atavistic horror tropes.) Read more

Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle: There's no attempt at humor in Dead Silence, but the biggest sin in the film is the lack of scares. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: A gothic chiller in which morbid atmospherics and simmering suspense build to an ingenious third-act climax. Read more

Jason Anderson, Globe and Mail: The movie's uninteresting characters, boneheaded dialogue and flagrantly nonsensical narrative detract considerably from the virtues of the visual design. Read more

Nigel Floyd, Time Out: It's affectionately done, but rather pointless. Read more

John Anderson, Variety: Formulaic and rather lazy exercise in booga-booga scare tactics. Read more

Jim Ridley, Village Voice: Dolls are innately unnerving, but the movie's semi-menacing Charlie McCarthys never live up to their potential. Read more