Good scare ruined by a laughable story.

Rating: 5/10 (2 May 2006)

I went into this movie really wanting to like it, but was very disappointed. Granted there seems to be an inverse relationship between age and liking horror movies (notice the ratings vs. age) and 25 years ago I probably would have been on the edge of my seat and slept with the lights on, but I found "Silent Hill" far from creepy and more amusing than a horror movie.
I think part of the problem is that I was expecting something which while unbelievable could at least leave you feeling there was some base on reality, such as "The Sixth Sense" or "Ringu", (the 1998 Japanese version of "The Ring." Instead it was like they were trying to explain the strange happenings in "Silent Hill" to make it believable but failed so badly that it just made it amusing. If they had left out the background and scenes in the real world and set the movie entirely in an alternate sort of fantasy world such as "Resident Evil" or "Underworld" I think it would have played out a lot better. With those movies they weren't supposed to be based in our world so you started the movies from scene one in a fantasy world and I found that much better than "Silent Hill" that wants to try and explain why all these creatures are out to kill our heroine, but instead just makes you laugh. Oh and speaking of our "heroine" if my daughter was having nightmares and my wife decided to drive off in the middle of the night to a ghost town with toxic ash falling I would sue for divorce and custody of my child once I found her.