One of the few good game to movie adaptations.

Rating: 8/10 (26 August 2006)

You know, by now, video game movies should almost be a genre in cinema by now. With video game movies as early as the Super Mario Brothers Movie, which was mediocre at best, yet still enjoyable, we found there is no way to make video games to be good movies. Video games can be played, movies cannot. More of a story in be told in video games than the movie, which has only so much time to tell a story.
It's not that video game movies are destined to become bad, but unless someone can come up with a way to capture what everyone liked about the game before and put it into cinema, Video game movies will fall on their face in being bad.
This movie may have the answer. Silent Hill, a very dark, and stirring film directed by Christophe Gans, (The french director who directed The Brotherhood of the Wolf) who says he plays the games, and found this one to have a great story to be made into a movie.
The story follows Rose (Radha Mitchell) who lives with her husband Christopher (Sean Bean) and daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland), when one frightening evening, Rose finds her daughter saying "Silent Hill!" Rose believes that maybe taking her daughter (Rather, adoptive daughter) to Silent Hill, might be able to get some insight on why Sharon mentions this place.
Along the way, A cop named Cybil (Laurie Holden) follows Rose and Sharon, to ask a few questions. Instead of stopping for her, Rose drives down the road to Silent Hill to try and evade her, and in a rush, she takes a sharp turn down a curvy road to avoid hitting what appears to be a little girl in the road. Rose wakes the next morning to find Sharon is gone, and the road she drove on is gone. She begins to enter the town with only Sharon on her mind. After an encounter with several frightening monsters, she soon realizes this world is not what she would expect, and not only can she not leave, but only one other person besides herself has followed her this far, Cybil. With Cybil's help, and the help of several other clues hidden in other places, She plans to solve the mystery of Silent Hill, and doesn't plan to leave until Sharon is with her again.
The movie is indeed creepy, and will disturb some of those who cannot stand some of the more violent moments or more visually disturbing sequences. The acting is done very well, the fear doesn't seemed like they are trying at times. The story is a bit iffy, since it somewhat lacks a real good plot, but it's based off a video game, so you can't complain.
The monsters are inventive and original, with the exception of the Red Pyramid, whose a regular from the games. Some may assume, based on their brightness and gray color, they are CG, but in fact, all are latex and foam.
The ending is a bit of a disappointment, but it feels vaguely reminiscent of "The 6th Sense", in a way. All that aside, this is probably one of the better video game movies I've seen since Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. If you like the game, see it, if you haven't played the game, read up on it, then see it, it'll help you out a lot.
I rate this an 8/10.