True Blood Goes to the Movies: Ryan Kwanten stars in Dead Silence

Dead Silence (originally titled Shhhh) with alternate title suggestions such as The Doll and Mary Shaw is a 2007 horror film from James Wan and Leigh Whannell, the creators of Saw.

The film stars Ryan Kwanten as the main protagonist, Jamie Ashen, Donnie Wahlberg as Detective Jim Lipton and Judith Roberts as Mary Shaw. It was released nationwide on March 16, 2007, and was released on DVD and HD DVD on June 26, 2007. Altogether, there are three versions of the movie: the edited, R rated movie, and an uncut version. The movie took 6 months and 17 days to film.

Plot summary : Every town has it's own ghost story, and a local folktale around Ravens Fair is about a ventriloquist named Mary Shaw. After she went mad in the 1940s, she was accused of kidnapping a young boy who yelled out in one of her performances that she was a fraud. Because of this she was hunted down by townspeople who in the ultimate act of revenge, cut out her tongue and then killed her. They buried her along with her "children," a handmade collection of vaudeville dolls, and assumed they had silenced her forever. However, Ravens Fair has been plagued by mysterious deaths around them after Mary Shaws collection has returned from their graves and have come to seek revenge on people that killed her and their families. Far from the pall of their cursed hometown, newlyweds Jamie and Lisa Ashen thought they had established a fresh start, until Jamie's wife is grotesquely killed in their apartment.

Jamie returns to Ravens Fair for the funeral, intent on unraveling the mystery of Lisa's death. Once reunited with his ill father, Edward, and his father's new young bride, Ella, Jamie must dig into the town's bloody past to find out who killed his wife and why. All the while, he is doggedly pursued by a detective who doesn't believe a word he says. As he uncovers the legend of Mary Shaw, he will unlock the story of her curse and the truth behind the threat from a rhyme in his childhood: if you see Mary Shaw and scream, she'll take your tongue. And the last thing you will hear before you die...is your own voice speaking back to you. Written by Christopher Hernandez

The IMDb site here
The Wikpedia entry here
Ryan interviewed here