Perfect rendition, but then some

Rating: 8/10 (22 April 2006)

A friend of mine got me into the excitement of watching her boyfriend play the Silent Hill games. We can't play them ourselves because we quite frankly are too intimidated and scared to. However we enjoy the sense of being freaked out of our minds by the neurological horror brought forth by them and find the stories in them fresh and innovative.
To be sure, discovering that a movie was being made had us all ecstatic but suspicious. We're not idiots to the notion that video games are hardly ever represented properly on the big screen as stand-alone features. Nevertheless, we counted down the months and days until the opening of this picture.
When we finally got to see it, the time was 20 minutes past midnight, so the children were sure to be at home. We only had a few annoying college doofs that probably passed the joint around before the show.
But thankfully, the show really delivered on everything that made the games so engrossing.
The set and creature design was spot on. I can't begin to explain to you how disturbing it was to see how the famous creatures from games one and two walked. Maps, clues, keys and puzzles were part of the story as she should have been. Generally, the entire first two thirds of the movie were going in a wonderfully dank and depressing direction. My heart sank every time the town siren sounded.
Despite having worries about the Christopher Da Silva scenes as being convoluted and unnecessary, I didn't have issues with them. They showed an interesting contrast between Silent Hill experiences for different people.
For me, what altered the mood to a less engrossing level was upping the level of inhabitants in the town from four to about 40. The pay off in the end was worth it, but seeing the rise of human element seemed to negate most of the terror. Additionally, I felt that the fate of one of the key characters was a trifle unnecessary to show in disgusting detail. The time could have been spent better on more monster confrontations.
At the end of all things, I think that the depiction was horrifically excellent. Aside from masses which are handled in a strangely cathartic manner, I'd say that the movie was finished OK. Though if a director's cut is floating around in the editing room, I'd certainly want to wait up for that one instead. For some, two hours was too long of a movie. I was quite frankly surprised to see it end so quickly.
It's still the best game to film adaptation, but it doesn't work well as a solitary piece. The doors are left wide open for sequels thankfully. Whether the James Sunderland or the Heather Morris story lines are to be explored remain unanswered, but fans in general will really like what they see in this movie.
And as for poor acting, the characters don't act any worse than the voices of the characters in the games.