Much Over-Hyped Movie About Nothing

Rating: 4/10 (9 September 2006)

This movie is being touted as the best thing since sliced bread, unfortunately, the people who are saying this movie is so great are all the people who have played the video game. For us who have never heard of the video game before, this movie is a sloppy horror film that has its moments, but doesn't make a silent hill worth of sense (pardon the pun).
A woman's daughter has problem sleeping and she mentions "Silent Hill" in her sleep, so rather than put her daughter in a hospital or some place where she can get help, she takes her kid to the place in the girl's dreams-- a bizarre town that supposedly had a coal fire some years before but seems to be a suburb of hell where all manner of weird and dangerous creatures run amok.
The woman had been followed by a somewhat deranged lady cop who-- for no real apparent reason-- decides to follow this woman into hell, uh, into the town of Silent Hill. The husband is also accompanied by another cop into the same town, but neither wife and husband or pair of cops meet each other and for some unexplained reason, one side of the town seems totally different from the other side.
This movie goes on-- and on-- and on-- for a long while, with a lot monstrous and gruesome things happen, but we're never given any explanation for anything much, and when we do get a kind of explanation about witches and trying to save the town, well that's more confusing than anything.
I won't give away the ending, but I will say that it's not the kind that will make you say, "Wow!" but the kind that will make you say, "Huh? What the hell just happened?"
Perhaps this movie makes more sense to the video gamers, but a film maker has an obligation to make movies that are clear to every one,and this movie sure isn't it. It's interesting to watch, once, but I can't say it's really enjoyable so I only give it four stars.