Dead Silence

Yesterday I went out with some friends to watch Dead Silence. Going in, I didn’t think much of it. I’ve never really found English horror films or thrillers scary. I’ve watched quite a few Asian horror films and the English ones are nothing compared to those.

But this movie proved me wrong! From the makers of the movie SAW, this was one of their best yet. I couldn’t stop jumping in covering my eyes, squealing and jumping in my seat. Even my boo was too chicken to watch it!

 

mary shaw poem

Beware the stare of Mary Shaw
She had no children, only dolls
And if you see her in your dreams
Be sure you never, ever scream

 

 

 

Plot taken from Wikipedia.

In the sleepy town of Raven’s Fair, there is a ghost story about Mary Shaw, a ventriloquist whose ambition was to make the perfect doll. Accused of murdering a young boy named Michael Ashen, Shaw was hunted down and killed by the vengeful townspeople, who cut her tongue out. They buried her along with her “children”, a hand-made collection of 101 ventriloquist puppets, including Billy (a reference to the puppet used in the Saw series, who has a cameo later in the film), Ursula, Gregory, and a clown puppet named Cornelius.

 

Since the lynching, Raven’s Fair has been plagued by death. The ghastly dolls from Mary Shaw’s collection have gone missing from her grave, and over the decades, families are found gruesomely murdered with their tongues torn out and their jaws ripped open, and their bodies posed in family portrait positions. In the wake of these morbid events, ventriloquist dummies have become bad omens in the town, as they usually indicate that Mary Shaw is nearby, ready to tear out her next tongue. (It is revealed in the unrated version that the “stolen” tongues are added to a “collection” in her own mouth, allowing her to mimic the voices of the victims).

 

The film opens with scenes of Mary Shaw writing in her notebook and assembling Billy. Meanwhile, far from the pall of their hometown, newlyweds Jamie (Ryan Kwanten) and Lisa Ashen (Laura Regan), believe they have established a fresh start, when a ventriloquist dummy, who later turns out to be Billy, is mysteriously delivered to their doorstep. Subsequently, Jamie returns home from an night out, only to find Lisa viciously murdered, with her jaw torn open and her tongue ripped out. Jamie reluctantly returns to Raven’s Fair for the funeral, intent on unraveling the mystery of her death while trying to clear his name in his wife’s murder.

 

After a fruitless meeting with his wheelchair-bound father (Bob Gunton) and his father’s young bride Ella (Amber Valletta), Jamie remains determined to delve into the town’s bloody past in an attempt to learn the identity and motives of his wife’s killer. As he learns of the legend of Mary Shaw, the ventriloquist who lived and performed at the Guignol Theater (a reference to the Grand Guignol, the legendary shock-theater Paris playhouse) decades ago, Jamie uncovers the origins of the Mary Shaw curse.

 

With the skeptical Detective Jim Lipton (Donnie Wahlberg) not far behind, Jamie investigates the now-dilapidated Guignol Theater, the very place where Michael Ashen embarrassed her by announcing that he could see her lips moving during one of her performances. As Jamie and Lipton search her attic living quarters, they find Michael’s corpse, strung up like a marionette, along with the 100 missing dolls, which gradually come to life and look over at a rocking chair next to their display cases (as a sidenote, when Jamie and Jim walk towards the rocking chair, there is a support beam with Jigsaw’s doll sitting propped-up against the bottom). As Shaw begins communicating through the clown puppet Cornelius, which is sitting in the rocking chair, Jamie is horrified to learn that his wife was killed because she had an Ashen “growing inside of her.”

 

With that revelation, Cornelius begins laughing wickedly, and each of the dolls’ faces distort as Mary attempts to use each of them against Jamie and Lipton, who realize that all 101 dolls must be destroyed to prevent Mary from acting through them. The two men ignite the large storage casing holding the puppets, effectively destroying 100 of them, while the last puppet, Billy, remains in someone else’s possession. As the two men escape the blazing theater, with Mary Shaw in hot pursuit, the catwalk along which they are running collapses. As he involuntarily screams, Lipton is killed in mid-fall by Shaw, while Jamie is sent plunging into the water below the theater.

 

Jamie realizes that Billy is the only remaining doll, and that the only way to rid the town of Mary Shaw is to destroy him. He goes to Henry Walken, the mortician with whom he had left Billy, only to discover that Shaw had killed him and that Billy was taken much earlier. After Walken’s distraught wife says that Jaime’s father took the doll (which seems impossible since he is an invalid), Jamie returns to his father’s house to destroy Billy. As he arrives, Mary Shaw reappears, but is forced to retreat when Jamie throws Billy, “the last puppet”, into the fireplace. As she is forced back into the shadows, Jamie finds his wheelchair-bound father sitting, staring blankly into space. As he approaches him, Jamie is horrified to find that his father is dead, his entire back torn out and replaced with a wooden shaft used in ventriloquist dummies.

 

As Jamie realizes that his young stepmother was always at his father’s side, she suddenly appears next to him; Ella is in fact the perfect doll that Mary Shaw strove to make, and had been using the elder Ashen’s corpse as a puppet to lure Jamie. (It should be noted that the deleted scenes depict Ella as an actual person who actually married Mr. Ashen. After being assaulted by him, she is visited by Mary Shaw’s ghost. Ella is prompted to go to the graveyard and dig up Billy, when Mary Shaw possesses her body). Ella then says “Now, who’s the dummy?” and lightning flashes in the sky, briefly showing the ghostly Mary Shaw behind her disguise, who tears out Jamie’s tongue and jaw as he screams “No!” The closing shot shows Mary Shaw’s puppet book with pictures of Jamie, Detective Lipton, and his family as dolls. As the camera zooms away from the book, Jamie recites the poem in voiceover and when he is done, Mary Shaw closes the book and the credits begin to roll.

 

Hannibal Rising

I’ve finally had a chance to watch it yesterday!! Oh golly me!! If you haven’t watched it, you have to!! I give it five stars, my friend who went withme felt the same way but my boyfriend didn’t think it was any good. He actually fell asleep midway through the movie.

I reckon Gaspard Ulliel, who plays Hannibal Lecter, had been the perfect person for the role. All through the movie, you can see crazy in his eyes, his face alone was able to show that he was a monster. From time to time you can see that he had something brewing in his mind when a dimple suddenly appears high on his cheek, even though his face’s expression hadn’t changed a bit.

I have so much I would like to say about the movie, but I’d rather no spoil it for those who have not yet seen it. I can comment though that it has not let me down. That is truely oneof the most brutally gruesome and disturbing movies I’ve ever seen. I loved it!.

The scene with the rope and the horse is one of my personal favourites. Especially so when you can see the guy’s eyes red, bulging out, as is the slightest wrong move could easily make it pop out. Also the scene towards the end, where Hannibal cried was fantastic. All through out the movie, he did not expressed any strong emotions but here, in one sentence, his world almost crumbles and it must have been the strongest feeling he had ever felt. It was amazing.

If you love such kinds of thrillers, it is a definitely a must see. Now next on the list of movies that I have to check out would be its sequels, Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal.

Leon: the Professional

A few days ago, while doing nothing, my boyfriend had put the Leon the Professional dvd on. I thought nothing of it at first, I thought it would be some low budget and dodgy movie with a bad storyline. I didn’t care to set my eyes on it.

But I was proven wrong!! Knowing my interest in hitman movies and such, my boyfriend insisited that I watch it because it is supposed to be a great one! And so I forced myself to, only to find that it is now one of my ultimate favourites.

So If you haven’t seen it, you have to!! Here are some reviews I’ve found for the movie:

From IMBD, Author: cdsmith-2 from Colorado Springs, CO

This film was absolutely amazing. I have spent hours re-watching various scenes and noticing all the perfection with which they are acted and directed. It’s not the violence or action sequences that make this movie so great (although they are well done…), but rather moments like where Mathilda knocks on Leon’s door. It would be so easy to just film the door opening, but instead we see light illuminating Natalie Portman’s face, symbolizing something angelic. And the moment has so much more meaning.

I know a lot of people who have seen this film because they are action fans. I’m not. But I’m glad I finally found it, because it’s a wonderful film in so many other ways.

A Film Review: Copyright Dragon Antulov 2000

Few examples seem as appropriate for the phrase “style over substance” as the career of French filmmaker Luc Besson. His films earned great deal of popularity simply by looking “cool” and flooding the audience with impressive sounds and images, while seriously lacking coherent plot and character development in the same time. Besson managed to solve at least some of those problems in his 1990 film LE FEMME NIKITA. However, it seems that Besson thought that at least some characters of that film weren’t sufficiently explored, namely The Cleaner, played by Jean Reno. Four years later, the variation of that character became the protagonist of THE PROFESSIONAL, action film that is now mostly associated with the career of Natalie Portman.

In this film Jean Reno plays L‚on, man whose job description might very well be summed up in the phrase “cleaner”. He is one of the deadliest hitmen in New York underworld, able to complete even the most complicated and difficult tasks with incredible efficiency and all that without trace. L‚on’s professional success is in sharp contrast with the quiet and utterly ascetic private life he mostly spends in his small apartment. His 12-year old neighbour Mathilda (played by Natalie Portman), on the other hand, has a lot of problems with drug-dealing father (played by Michael Badaluco) and the rest of her dysfunctional family. Things get even worse when the family gets a visit from the group of corrupt DEA agents, led by psychopathic Norman Stansfield (played by Gary Oldman). Mathilda is the only survivor of the massacre and she seeks the refuge behind her neighbour’s door. L‚on takes her in and reluctantly agrees to shelter her until things cool down.

Mathilda is, on the other hand, quite impressed when she finds about her protector’s true profession so she wants to use his talents in order to avenge the death of her 4-year old brother. First she wants to hire him, then she wants him to teach her skills of “cleaner”, while L‚on, utterly inexperienced in personal relationships, unsuccessfully tries to keep both of them from trouble. However, presence of the girl begins to affect L‚on and he becomes to sees the previous emptiness of his life. Stansfield in the meantime becomes aware that he left the eyewitness during the massacre so the extremely violent conflict between him and L‚on becomes inevitable.

Besson again remains faithful to his reputation by filling THE PROFESSIONAL with many visually impressive scenes and very atmospheric and memorable music by his long-time collaborator Eric Serra. Besson’s talent is most visible in action scenes, especially the final showdown, which is probably one of the best-choreographed gun battles in the past decade. However, old-fashioned phrase “style over substance” still hurts this film and whenever Besson decides to pay much attention to the plot and character development, the lack of those particular talents becomes quite apparent.

Large amount of implausabilties in the Besson’s screenplay (it is really hard to imagine ultra-efficient yet illiterate hitman in modern-day New York or said low- profile hitman choosing to live next door to drug dealers) is the only part of the problem. Greatest flaw of this film is Besson’s inability to decide how to handle the relationship between 12-year old girl and the hitman three times her age. Various avenues – ordinary friendship, substitute parenting and even Lolita-like relationship – are hinted, but never sufficiently explored, so after the few scenes in the beginning film meanders until violent finale brings some sort of conclusion.

However, the acting in this film superb, especially in the case of Reno who seems as the perfect choice for this role. Although young Natalie Portman shows a lot of talent in her first feature film role, sometimes that performance slips into overacting. Gary Oldman, on the other hand, does his trademark psycho routine very well, while Danny Aiello provides good contrast with his minimalist approach to the role of L‚on’s mob contact Tony. Taking everything into consideration, THE PROFESSIONAL seems to be one of the most overrated films of the past decade, but Besson’s skills of action director are enough to guarantee entertainment to those who like “artsy” approach to that particular genre.