A wooden dummy
is dropped off unexpectantly at a house
to a married couple named Jamie (Ryan
Kwanten) and Lisa (Laura Regan).
Lisa finds the dummy cute and decides to
keep it in their bedroom but one night
the dummy seems to kill her and Jamie
goes to the aid of a homicide officer
named Ron Grady (Donnie Wahlberg) about
the murder cvase. However, Ron thinks
that Jamie is a prime suspect.
Jamie does some reserching as there was
an old legend of the dummy that causes
bad things to happen to people and goes
to a small town to find out from others
about it.
To Jamie's surprise the doll was used for
comedy shows by an elderly woman named
Mary Shaw (Judith Roberts) as she passed
on and the town people say that her name
is not to be revealed from her grave plus
a child who taunted her performance back
then was reported missing as well so
Jamie tries to put the puzzle together on
this missing case.
During the
beginning of the film it looked like it
would be a little stale but really it
gets very suspenseful and exciting with
lots of unsolved twisted mysteries.
If you like hauntings or mysterious
terrors you shoukld check this one out as
it has a Twilight Zone
type of feel to it.
If
you also enjoy movies like The
Omen or The Exorcist you'll
appreciate this one too.
The acting is in
fair taste and not awful at all. Lead
actor Ryan
Kwanten I never found too superb in
his role like you'd expect an actor to
play in a film like this but he wasn't
terrible just a little rusty.
Surprise surprise we also have former New
Kids on the Block bubblegum
teenybopper Donnie Wahlberg as a
homicide detective who does a passable
job delivering his lines and character
too but is not as successful as his
younger brother Marky Mark but
he's still impressive surprisingly.
Supporting actress Joan Heney is
the best out of them all as the disturbed
and crazed old lady who is terrified
about the curse of Mary Shaw with her
crazed voice and paranoid expressions.
A woman spits up
blood.
Many people's corpses are used for a
dummy revealing some of their insides.
James Wan really
gets the film going with the frights
involved in the story.
He shows great camera shots of the
dummy's head moving when you sometimes
don't expect thatr to happen as well as
the surroundings and sounds during the
terrifying moments.
He coached Heney terricially
with her character making her one of the
main mysterious cast members in the film
and has a good scene with Kwanten
in the woods after a funeral event about
Mary Shaw which is one of the key scenes
to the film.
There is also a great flashback scene
with elderly actress Judith Roberts
doing a show with the dummy and showing a
very cold scene when she wasn't happy
with that child taunting her as Wan made
that scene extremely effective for the
story.
He also showed terrific moments of Roberts'
character haunting Kwanten's character
during certain scenes throughout the
film.
Charlie
Clouser leaves an impression with
his sharp music during the opening
sequence and does a well performance as a
composer.
|
