Friends who pay more attention to horror movies must have noticed a recent news.
Wen Ziren's new film "Fatal Induction" will be released in North American theaters + streaming media on September 10.
Many netizens cheered loudly, and the horror master finally returned to his old business.
After successively filming classic horror films such as "The Chainsaw", "Death", "The Conjuring" , Wen Ziren was invited to shoot "Fast and Furious 7", "Aquaman" and other sci-fi movies.
Although both films have achieved extremely high box office worldwide, Wen Ziren's horror film is still the most anticipated by audiences.
While looking forward to "Fatal Induction", today we will review Dao Wen's classic works.
dead silence
Director: Wen Ziren
Screenwriter: Ray Warner
Starring: Donnie Wahlberg, Amber Valletta, Ryan Kwanten
Michael Fellman / Bob Gunton / Laura Regan
Release date: 2007-03-16 (US)
Length: 89 minutes
This high-scoring film released in 2007 is the second film after Wen Ziren directed the virgin "The Chainsaw".
In the case of a low score in the horror genre, it still received a score of 7.8 and ranked fifth on the list of high-scoring supernatural movies. (The top four are "The Shining", "Frightening Island", "Master Key", "The Conjuring")
Everything in the story begins with a "puppet".
On a rainy night, the protagonist Jamie and his wife Lisa received an anonymous package containing a strange-looking puppet, which they did not take as an ominous sign.
Jamie then goes out to buy dinner, leaving Lisa at home alone.
Lisa put the puppet on the bed and covered it with a white bedcloth, intending to surprise Jamie.
At this time, the surroundings began to become strange, and the sharp whistling sound of the kettle seemed to tell the audience that something bad was about to happen.
Sure enough, Lisa was killed.
She was dragged mercilessly and had her tongue cut off.
By the time Jamie realized something was wrong, Lisa had already been killed, and her death was tragic.
The room was empty, and the officer had to suspect that Jamie had murdered his wife.
But Jamie did not break down emotionally, but calmly looked for clues that his wife was victimized.
The package containing the puppet became the biggest reason in his heart to kill his wife.
He hurried home and carefully checked the hidden message on the package.
Mary Shaw's puppet curse was then revealed.
He returned to the town of Ravens where he was born, where paranormal events related to puppets occurred all year round, there were not many permanent residents, and the streets were depressed.
He went back to his father's house to find out.
The one who opened the door was his stepmother whom he had never met. The stepmother said that his father had suffered a stroke a few months ago and had lost the ability to walk independently, so he could only rely on a wheelchair for a living.
The two estranged fathers and sons did not communicate in depth, and Lisa's death made him unwilling to care more. After a few words of communication, he turned around and went to Walker Funeral Home to prepare for Lisa's burial.
On that night, the horrific event happened again.
The scary ventriloquist started to move, the voice calling "Jamie" kept coming from the room, Mary Xiao's face flickered behind the curtain, and Jamie couldn't sleep at night.
The next day, after Lisa's funeral, Jamie learns from Marianne (wife of Henry, the funeral home handler) that the ventriloquist must be buried to stop the tragedy from happening again.
That night, Jamie came to Ravens Fell Cemetery and tried to bury the ventriloquist.
At this time, the camera kept spinning, and it seemed that someone had been watching him silently.
Don't worry, this time it's not Mary Xiao, but the police officer who has been monitoring him waiting to solve the case.
Jamie did not get rid of the suspicion of killing his wife, the ventriloquist puppet was used as a crime, and was dug from the grave by the police officer.
Jamie came to the funeral home again to find Henry and Marian, trying to find more valid information.
But Mary Xiao left a great shadow on them, and they were reluctant to mention her name.
At Jamie's repeated insistence, Henry was finally willing to sit down and have a good chat with him about the deceased woman who had brought fear.
- Mary Shaw
Mary Shaw, a famous ventriloquist in Ravenstown, has no children, only puppets.
She has always believed that her puppets are living people just like her children.
Until one day, when Mary Shaw was performing on stage, a child who was ignorant and honest exposed her puppet's lies.
The child said bluntly: "I see your lips moving, your puppet is not a real person."
Mary Shaw's last psychological defense was completely defeated, and hatred slowly spread in her heart.
In fact, as early as the beginning of the film, the director introduced us to the concept of ventriloquists.
"In the 6th century BC, it was believed that the dead speak through the abdomen of the living, so based on the Latin words "belly" and "speaking", people formed a new word - ventriloquist".
Mary Shaw is one of the ventriloquists, who speaks through her abdomen to voice her ventriloquist puppets, playing two roles.
A few weeks later, the little boy disappeared strangely, with no sign at all.
Mary Shaw was also bizarrely murdered shortly after.
In her will, she wanted people to bury her with her 101 dolls.
Henry, the narrator of the story, was the witness who witnessed her burial.
In addition to Henry's father taking the responsibility of burying her, another hidden will of Mary Shaw has also emerged.
She hopes the corpse handler will turn her into a doll too.
Henry, who was still young at that time, walked into his father's mortuary out of curiosity, and the terrifying image of the doll Mary Shaw stayed in his heart forever.
After she was buried, bad news continued to come from the village. Some families were exterminated, and their bodies were all tongueless and put in the same pose.
The next day, Marian hid again out of fear, and Henry was so angry that he was going to bury the doll.
And misfortune struck again.
Henry's tongue was cut off and he died horribly.
At this point in the plot, we can't help but ask why Mary Shaw cut off people's tongues?
The ensuing fragment reveals this mystery for us.
It turns out that the little boy who disappeared 70 years ago was a relative of Jamie: Michael Anson.
The ancestors of the Anson family thought that Mary Shaw had kidnapped their child, so together with the citizens of Ravens Town, they cut off her tongue and killed her.
But she did not die, but survived in another way (parasitic on the doll) .
Cut off the tongue and kill the junior of the Anson family, officially Mary Shaw's way of revenge.
She was inspired to cut off the tongues of those who kept her quiet and kill them, their children, their children.
The film to the protagonist Jamie, is the last member of the Anson family.
The puzzle is now solved, and the final duel is about to begin.
Jamie, who received a call from Henry, rushed to the theater where Mary Shaw used to live.
But what he didn't know was that Henry's voice had been taken away by Mary Xiao, and the theater had a bigger secret waiting for him to uncover.
At the same time, Mary Shaw is also determined to end her final revenge there.
When he and the police officer went deep into the theater, he was surprised to find 101 dolls neatly arranged in the cupboard, and these dolls had been buried with Mary Shaw.
The town's largest disappearance case in the last century has also been solved.
The missing Michael Anson (his grandfather) is being hung in the theater as a real-life doll.
Finally, Mary Xiao appeared.
With a gloomy face, she hopes to kill Jamie to complete her revenge.
After the two fought for a few rounds, Jamie discovered her weakness.
That is, she must depend on the doll to survive, and if all the dolls are destroyed, she will also disappear.
Then Jamie let out a fire and all 101 dolls were destroyed.
Just when we thought it was over, the truly terrifying twist was just beginning.
After Mary Shaw died, Jamie returned home to confirm her father's safety.
However, what he did not expect was that his father had already died.
For a long time, the father who talked to him was controlled by Mary Shaw.
And the stepmother who has always been by his side is the perfect doll that was finally made in the Mary Shaw doll-making manual that appeared earlier in the film.
A song like this is popular in the town:
"Beware of Mary Shaw's gaze,
She has no children, only puppets;
If you see her in a dream,
Please don't scream."
He was smart enough to know that as long as he didn't scream, there was no way for Mary Xiao to kill him.
No matter how difficult the situation was, he kept his lips tightly closed.
And this time, Jamie finally broke the defense and cried out.
It was difficult for him to accept that it was not only that Mary Xiao was not dead.
Even more so, the cautious and extremely intelligent self who had always been blinded by the illusions created by Mary Xiao was completely unaware of it.
So far, Mary Shaw's horror revenge story has ended, and Jamie and all the members of the Anson family have not been able to escape the trick of fate.
At the end of the film, all the members of the Anson family appear in the death book, and Mary Shaw's songs are still playing back constantly, and the thrilling mood and atmosphere linger for a long time.
In fact, it is not uncommon for the protagonist to strive to break his cursed identity and instead plunge himself into a deeper hell.
As early as the ancient Greek classic drama "Oedipus the King" this narrative mode appeared.
In "Oedipus the King", Oedipus was cursed by murdering his father and marrying his mother. Even though he tried everything to avoid this tragedy, he still failed to escape his fate.
In the end, Oedipus blinded himself in grief and banished himself forever to atone for his heinous crime.
Similar to Oedipus, Jamie, the protagonist of "Dead Silence", was also born with a heavy curse. He worked hard to break the curse of Mary Shaw and seek the truth of the matter, but he still failed to escape the fate of being killed.
However, even though such stories are not uncommon, we can feel the new vitality of this story under the exquisite creation of horror master Wen Ziren.
Dead Silence's nerve-wracking narrative rhythm, fast-paced editing, and emotionally charged horror soundtrack and ambient atmosphere all make us bemoan Jamie's fate.
Perhaps, the real charm of art lies in how to tell a story that has been heard a thousand times to others, yet still make others deeply touched after listening to it.
If you are eager to relive the horror world of Wen Dao before the arrival of "Fatal Induction", you may as well find this "Dead Silence" to create a cool summer.
*The author of this article: L
View more about Dead Silence reviews
