intelligent, high quality horror

Rating: 9/10 (16 May 2006)

After watching several awfully bad video game-to-cinema-flicks like doom or alien vs predator, i didn't expect much from this one. How wrong could i be! It is rich in detail, contains countless of amazing shots, plenty of gore and a really scary atmosphere. Exactly like the game. The story is logical and interesting to follow, and the blending from reality to the completely insane and freaked out surreality work pretty well. The effects are simply stunning! What i also liked a lot is that the amount of violence is concentrated on special moments only. No mindless kill-one-after-another-in-the-most-violent-way-you-can-imagine like many other movies do. Silent Hill builds up the scariness slowly and painfully and then suddenly lets all hell break lose. There were some occasions in this movie where i sat there and said "whow". This doesn't happen very often... Also i'd like to note that i've rarely seen such a violent movie, not because of the amount of brutality shown, but especially because of the witch burning scenes. Pretty disturbing! One thing i didn't like is that the scary atmosphere was disrupted several times when the story switches back to Sean, the father of the missing girl and the police officers. It seemed a bit like a gap-filler. Maybe it also was on purpose for people to relax, but i wouldn't mind being scared for 90 minutes straight.
Also the German-translated voice of the girl in the last parts of the movie (i've watched it in Austria) feels misplaced. It sounds too much sci-fi, like the representation of the computer in resident evil.
All in all i can recommend anyone who likes horror movies to go and see this one.