If you like the series, there is something for you in this movie.

Rating: 7/10 (16 December 2006)

If you already know how much scarier it is to play a horror based game than it is to watch any kind of horror movie, then you know what a daunting task the producers had in making this movie because Silent Hill is one of the scariest games ever made and arguably the scariest of all. I even think it's a bit unfair to expect any movie to match that, but I do expect them to keep trying. Silent Hill the movie will not scare you like the game, but it tries hard enough that anyone who enjoyed the game should appreciate this work.
To its credit the movie was able to do one thing that games (and movies) don't do well or often enough; It was the way the characters evoked emotion and reacted to events and surroundings. When the main character Rose Da Silva is thrust into this world of horror, she is extremely terrified and she has to work to collect herself more than once. I think that's almost how it should and would be. It's not something a normal person would see every day. Of course, the movie was also able to do some amazing special effects as well, such as when the paint peels off the walls and turns to a rusty, bloody, twisted, industrial mess of a nightmare, which is quite impressive considering that the surroundings look dilapidated and frightening enough before the transition even happens.
Although you'll realize very quickly that the story was re-written, you'll still be thinking to yourself that the director must have played the game in its entirety, because you'll notice little details borrowed from the spirit of the first two games. For example, Rose Da Silva is dressed a lot like Maria from Silent Hill 2 in my opinion. For most of the movie she's wearing a dress about the same length, a simple top and nice high boots to go with them. You will also see the nurses looking just as shapely as they do in the game, and their movements look as twisted. The same goes for Red Pyramid with the way he drags around that huge sword. The costume design for the female cop is nothing short of excellent too and the actress who played her did an equally good job. Sean Bean plays the devoted husband of of Rosa very well and I have no complaints about him either. One really cool game like moment is when Rosa is looking at the hospital map and she spends quite a bit of time trying to memorize it like we do when we pull up the map in the game. When traveling the halls she recites out loud what she was memorizing. Works for me.
Another thing I really liked was the fact that they used a fair amount of music from the game, though I truly wish they had packed in even more. It's great stuff and it made me realize that I have to get the soundtracks from the actual games. It's just too good not to have at the ready.
As for the storyline, it is pretty far fetched, but so is the story for the game. I found the story a bit hard to follow in Silent Hill 1 the game, but this movie provides more of a back story that could apply to that game. In fact, I don't really like "devil child" and "witch trial" type supernatural stuff, but they did alright with it. I liked the story of Silent Hill 2 best, where the main character was truly in his own hell, but you can't have everything.
The reason why this movie loses three stars is because it just can't scare me the way the game does, but no movie can do that. Anything else I don't like about the movie is much less reasonable, such as the fact that at the beginning of the movie, Cybil is wearing very dark shades outside at night or that I wanted more content and story from the games that would make the movie too long. This movie is worth seeing for what was done right and there's enough of that to go around.