10 Great Movie Monsters Trapped In Awful Horror Movies

8. Mary Shaw -- Dead Silence (2007)

Slender Man
Universal Pictures

Beware the stare of Mary Shaw. She had no children, only dolls.

The subject of poorly composed nursery rhymes and nightmares alike, Mary Shaw -- the antagonist of ventriloquism horror Dead Silence -- is quite unlike other horror movie monsters. A poltergeist ventriloquist, Mary rips out the tongues of those who scream in her presence before, well, murdering them.

But that's not where the fun ends, oh no, as she has a penchant for creating and controlling 'perfect dolls' -- life-size puppets made from the humans she kills. Though Dead Silence was marketed on the enduring appeal of the living dummy, Mary turns out to be far scarier by spades. Unfortunately, the rest of the film can't keep up.

Bogged down by a meandering plot, boring dialogue and forgettable main characters, it fails to make the most of its villain and instead rests idly in the usual cheap horror tropes and jump scares. Mary is a monster for the ages, the human puppets are horrifying, but the film they're in is barely alive.

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