In theaters

DEAD SILENCE, directed by James Wan, written by Leigh Whannell, 90 minutes, rated R.

The new James Wan movie, “Dead Silence,” features a ventriloquist’s dummy named Billy who comes to life in crashes of thunder and lightning to savagely eat the tongues of those who come too close to it. So right away, you know whether the movie is for you.

For the rest of us, things are predictably bleak.

The movie, which Wan based on a screenplay by Leigh Whannell (his co-creator on the equally dumb “Saw” franchise), will surprise absolutely nobody that, so far, it’s the worst movie of the year.

The film sends out rays of stupidity. It’s an orgy of bad choices and miscalculations. It’s pointless, it’s shabbily produced, it isn’t scary, it fears humor. It just is, which isn’t enough. The best that can be said for it is that it does feature a title that at least gets to the heart of what the movie elicits from its audience. Listen closely and you can hear in the dead silence the movie courts what’s also dying onscreen – the two brain cells that conceived the movie.

The film stars Ryan Kwanten as Jamie, who receives a mysterious package that, once opened, turns out to reveal Billy himself.

Since neither Ryan nor his wife, Lisa (Laura Regan), know what to make of the doll (in Jamie’s hometown, dolls are considered trouble), they stop trying and instead order takeout. Trouble is, when Jamie returns with the food, he finds that Lisa herself has become dinner – her jaw and her tongue are missing.

Could Billy also have had hunger pangs? Jamie has his suspicions. So does Donnie Wahlberg’s Detective Lipton, though his suspicions have nothing to do with Billy and everything to do with Jamie. Still, since he doesn’t arrest Jamie for Lisa’s murder, Jamie conveniently is allowed to dive into the rest of the plot, which involves his uneasy relationship with his father and hot new stepmother (Bob Gunton, Amber Valletta), and the powers of evil that boil within the angry she-ghost Mary Shaw (Judith Roberts), a dead ventriloquist whose dark past with dummies fuels her rage.

What “Dead Silence” misses is what the “Child’s Play” franchise embraced. If you’re going to feature a killer doll in your horror film, you better go for the camp aspect of it, let loose and have a little fun. Otherwise, you’ve somehow taken this way too seriously and cut your own throat.

That’s the case here. “Dead Silence” couldn’t make a clown happy. Out of all the movies we could have received – say, for instance, the ingenious South Korean horror movie, “The Host,” which is a terrific, modern-day twist on “Godzilla” and “Jaws” – this is the film they chose to show.

Grade: F

On DVD and Blu-ray disc

ROCKY BALBOA, written and directed by Sylvester Stallone, 102 minutes, rated PG-13.

Call it a comeback, but “Rocky Balboa” is the best Rocky film since the Academy Award-winning, 1976 original. It would be easy – and dismissive – to believe this happened by chance, but it didn’t. The truth is that writer, director and star Sylvester Stallone got it right.

In this, the franchise’s sixth outing, the surprise is that Stallone embraces being 60, which allows him to mine new depths from a character who appeared washed up a few Roman numerals ago.

The first part of the movie deals with the loss Rocky feels in the wake of his wife Adrian’s death, with his sullen, estranged son Robert Jr. (Milo Ventimiglia) not exactly helping the situation with his glum mood.

The film focuses on how each man must come to terms with Rocky’s fame. For Rocky, the question is whether he can be satisfied living in the past by telling lame, half-hearted boxing stories to those who frequent his South Philadelphia restaurant, Adrian’s. For Robert, the question is whether he can live in the crushing blow of his father’s shadow. Meanwhile, on the sidelines, the plot brews.

After ESPN declares that the brute force of a boxer like Rocky, regardless of his age, could hypothetically take down a young boxing superstar like Mason Dixon (Antonio Tarver), the possibility of an exhibition fight between them is swept to the forefront. For Rocky, his decision to go forward with the game and train for it comes down to the reason audiences fell for him in the first place – his belief in himself is transcendent. Only now, with the man’s joints hurting from age and his body thickened with arthritis, he once again is a believable underdog, which is a key element to the film’s success.

With Burt Young back as scrappy, squabbling Paulie and Geraldine Hughes as Marie, a single mother whose budding friendship with Rocky is touching in its restraint, the film has its share of cliches, but it doesn’t overdo them.

Stallone’s script has the easy feel of improvisation, with his loose, appealing performance following suit. Here is an actor so comfortable in the iconic role he created that he’s able to lose himself in it, deconstructing the myth while finding the man. That’s no easy feat, but Stallone, whose talent as an actor understandably has been cheapened over the years given his questionable choices in movies, nevertheless delivers his best turn since playing Sheriff Freddy Heflin in James Mangold’s “Cop Land.”

In the end, “Rocky Balboa” is a heartfelt, well-done conclusion to a story began 30 years ago.

Grade: B+

The Video-DVD Corner

Akeelah and the Bee – B+

Annapolis – C-

The Ant Bully – B+

Babel – A-

Basic Instinct 2 – D+

The Black Dahlia – C-

Blood Diamond – C+

Borat – B+

Cars – C

Casino Royale – A

Children of Men – A

Clerks II – B+

The Covenant – D

Crank – B+

Curious George – B

Date Movie – D-

The Da Vinci Code – C+

The Departed – A

The Descent – B+

The Devil Wears Prada – B+

Double Indemnity – A

Eragon – C

Failure to Launch – C-

Fast Food Nation – B-

Flushed Away – B+

Flyboys – C-

Freedomland – C-

Friends with Money – B

Full House: Complete Sixth Season – C+

Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties – C+

The Gridiron Gang – C+

Half Nelson – A-

Happy Feet – A-

A History of Violence – A

The Holiday – C+

Hollywoodland – C

The Illusionist – B+

Infamous – B+

Inside Man – B+

Invincible – B

Jackass Number Two – B

The Jeffersons: Complete Sixth Season – B

Junebug – A

Kinky Boots – B+

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – B+

Last Holiday – B

Little Miss Sunshine – B+

Lucky Number Slevin – B

The Marine – C+

Match Point – A

Miami Vice – C

Mission Impossible III – C-

Monster House – B+

Munich – A-

My Super Ex-Girlfriend – A-

NewsRadio: Complete Fifth Season – C-

The Omen – B-

Open Season – B

Over the Hedge – B

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest – B-

Poseidon – B

A Prairie Home Companion – C

The Prestige – B+

The Pursuit of Happyness – B-

Rocky Balboa – B+

Running with Scissors – C+

Shakespeare Behind Bars – A-

Sherrybaby – B+

Shut Up & Sing – A-

16 Blocks – B

Slither – B

Snakes On A Plane: A-

Stay Alive – D-

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby – B

This Film is Not Yet Rated – B-

United 93 – A

The Wicker Man – BOMB

World Trade Center – A

X-Men: The Last Stand – B-