'Silence' is too conflicted to compel
Not only does "Dead Silence" bring the killer dummy back to horror films, it reunites director James Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannell , the two dudes who made sadomasochism profitable again with "Saw." This new movie is a more credible, less grisly act of filmmaking ("Saw" was jittery and seemingly caked with grime), 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. But it does have a plot that revolves around a ventriloquist and her demon doll.
Most of the movie requires Jamie (Ryan Kwanten ) to drive to an ashen hamlet called Raven's Fair and find out who left a dummy outside his apartment door and what on earth made it kill his wife. If it even did. His estranged father (Bob Gunton ) claims ignorance, as does his latest wife (Amber Valletta ). (Valletta is doing double horror duty this weekend, also taking up space in the tedious new Sandra Bullock spook-fest, "Premonition.")
Donnie Wahlberg , who was the abused detective in the last two "Saw" films, plays a more nonsensical detective here. The picture of levity, he follows Jamie all over Raven's Fair rubbing his stubbled face with an electric shaver. While Wahlberg sends up his "Saw" role, Jamie discovers that the local coroner (Michael Fairman ) has some answers. They point toward the legend of crazy Mary Shaw (Judith Roberts ), who, in the olden days, might have taken her ventriloquism act too far, after a kid in the audience interrupts her act to tell everybody he can see her lips moving. The kid vanishes, the townsfolk form a lynch mob, and Mary is never heard from again. Not in the flesh, anyway.
The flashback to the kid's interruption is legitimately creepy: It's not Mary who was insulted, but her wooden partner. They argue in front of the crowd, talking over each other. So what initially seemed merely freakish about Mary and Billy suddenly seems full of evil. For that one sequence, "Dead Silence" has "Psycho"-like eeriness that you wish Wan and Whannell could sustain for an entire feature.
These two have a shred of talent (probably more), and there's a Gothic awfulness about their story. But they tell it through rushed montages that cheapen the sensation of discovery and leave an audience's craving for shock unfulfilled. And it's not as if they're trying to subvert the horror genre. Their every move seems cribbed from other places, and their movies, ultimately, are about obeying rules or adhering to convention (whether it's the genre's or their own).
To their credit, Wan and Whannell don't make cookie-cutter video-game fodder. They clearly love horror. But seemingly torn here between trying to scare us and top themselves, they do neither.
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com. For more on movies, go to boston.com/ae/movies/blog. 