Jamie Ashen is the husband of Lisa Ashen and the main protagonist in the 2007 horror film Dead Silence.
He is protrayed by Ryan Kwanten.
History[]
Jamie is first seen in his apartment with his wife. They then recieve a strange package whose sender is unknown. Unpacking, they find an old ventriloquist dummy. They decide to keep it for now. While Jamie goes out for a meal outside, Lisa stays alone at the apartment and got killed by the ghost of Mary Shaw through the dummy. When Jamie returns home, he discovers the corpse of his wife, the tongue torn off. The authorities then take Lisa's body under the eyes of Jamie in tears. The latter goes to a police office with detective Lipton. The two then speak of the incident and Jamie tells the legend about ventriloquist dummies. The detective says he will not arrest Jamie yet. He reads that he will have time to solve the case for him. For more information, Jamie visits the crime scene and discovers, on the dummy's box, that it comes from Ravens Fair, Jamie's hometown.
He will then go to this town, see his disabled father and his mother-in-law, Ella. The relationship between Jamie and his father is very tense although Ella claims that Edward has changed. After that, he goes to see Henry Walker at funeral home to talk about Lisa's coffin. For the night, he sleeps in an old motel with the dummy with him. Jamie then sees Mary Shaw's ghost in the bedroom and has just enough time to turn on the light so that she disappears. The next day, Jamie goes to his wife's funeral with the rest of her family (including Ella). He then walks around the cemetery and meets Marion, Henry's wife, who tells him he is in danger. Ignoring her, he continues to walk, and discovers the tomb of Mary Shaw. He then returns to the motel to bury the dummy which turns out to be named "Billy". During the ride, Mary Shaw possesses Billy to scare Jamie but this one still buries the doll. He then turns back to the motel and finds Billy on his bed. Lipton had followed him and unearthed the dummy just after Jamie's departure from the cemetery. The detective is actually stalking him, because he thinks Jamie is responsible for Lisa's death and he's curious to know why he buried the dummy. Jamie describes him the rhyme on Mary Shaw and her dolls.
He fails to fight with Lipton after he remarks ironically that his wife screamed and that's why she died. Still mistrustful, Lipton takes Billy with him and goes to his room next to Jamie's. The next day, when the detective goes to work, Jamie sneaks into his room to recover the dummy and goes to see Marion at the funeral home. Refusing to speak, this is Henry who recounts a memory of himself, child, when he had gone to the Guignol theater. Mary Shaw was doing a show with Billy and apparently knew Henry. Her skit is interrupted by another child, Michael Ashen (who is Jamie's great-uncle), who says he sees the ventriloquist's lips moving. Henry says that later, Michael was gone and Mary Shaw was suspicious for that. She was killed and stipulated to be transformed into a ventriloquist doll. One night, Henry wanted to see Mary's corpse and met her ghost. He managed to survive that night. The same day, Jamie leaves Henry, leaves him Billy, to go to the theater. There he finds an album on construction for ventriloquist dummies and sees a corpse in the mirror to see nothing behind him.
The same evening, he goes to his father's mansion to see him dine with Ella. He insists on discovering the secret of their family and Mary Shaw. His father tells him that his family killed the ventriloquist, with the help of other villagers. All those involved in the killing were later killed too, just like the rest of their family. Determined, Jamie is about to leave the mansion to solve the problem. He still meets Lipton who went to the cemetery to find that the 100 dolls were exhumed. He implies that Jamie is responsible. He is about to take the latter with him to be stopped by Ella who has received a call for Jamie. Mary Shaw, on the phone, uses the voice of Henry (killed earlier by the ghost), to tell Jamie to go to the theater, claiming he has evidence to exculpate him. Convinced, Jamie takes his car to go there, followed by the detective who still believes him guilty of the murder. The two are in the theater and Lipton hears Henry's voice.
They discover a huge shelf with 100 dummies. They meet a clown doll possessed by Mary Shaw and explain to Jamie that she killed Lisa because she was pregnant and therefore had the "last Ashen" in her. Lipton then shoots on the clown which is destroyed. Mary is incarnated in the other dolls and Jamie and the detective are forced to burn the entire shelf and flee. Both use a suspension bridge, wobbly. The latter breaks and Lipton falls before being caught by the ghost and taken behind curtains while Jamie managed to grab the bridge. The detective is then killed and Jamie sees Mary Shaw facing him, but stops screaming and drops the guardrail before crashing to the floor. Because of the height of the fall, Jamie breaks the planks of the ground and sinks into the water, underneath.
He manages to leave the theater on fire, to swim. He realizes that only one of the dolls has not perished and goes to Henry. He finds the corpse of the old man, held by Marion. Jamie asks her where Billy is. She tells him that his father came here and took away the dummy. He is now going to the mansion to find Billy in a cradle next to a chimney fire for only light. Suddenly, Mary's ghost comes up and Jamie rushes to burn Billy to drive her away, what then happens. Jamie then sees his father, silent, on his wheelchair. Edward then falls forward, and Jamie discovers in his back, a stick for ventriloquist. He realizes that his father was actually dead from the beginning and that Ella was manipulating him like a true dummy ventriloquist. Jamie turns to see his stepmother controlled by Mary Shaw who says: "Now who is the dummy?" before ripping out Jamie's tongue making him the last victim of the Ashen family. The film ends with a shot of all the movie's victims, with Jamie's voice telling the rhyme about Mary Shaw.
In the alternate ending (released as a DVD extra), Jamie doesn't die as Ella simply knocks him out after he discovers his father was a puppet all along. Then, she explains that the original Ella was a human being with Edward as an abusive husband. Edward knocked her down the stairs, and killed their unborn child. Ella dug up the grave where the puppet Billy was buried, and became possessed by Mary Shaw. Afterward, Ella makes a family photograph with him and the corpses of Lisa and Edward, and then, dressed as Mary Shaw, tells a bedtime story to a child by candlelight, later revealed to be a traumatized and unresponsive but still-alive Jamie with his voice copied and tongue ripped out (or would have been had they added the visual effect planned). This story is the poem. Ella relates that only silence can save you from Mary Shaw and then blows out the candle, ending the movie.