I Hate Everyone Who Recommended This Film To Me...

Rating: 3/10 (1 September 2006)

I didn't have very much interest in this film to begin with - until several of my friends saw it in the theater and said how good it was. Well - they were all wrong. Other than a few well-executed scenes - SILENT HILL was boring, hard to follow, laden with ineffective CGI and horrible performances by the actors involved. I typically don't watch a lot of U.S. theatrically-released horror films, preferring more "underground" material and older exploitation type films - but every once in a while I'm impressed with something that hits the "mainstream"...this is not one of those cases...
A little girl has strange dreams about a place called SILENT HILL, and when her mother notices strange behavior, including sleepwalking and drawing "creepy" pictures, she decides to take her daughter to the supposedly haunted town in search for answers. When she gets there, the town is deserted (or so it seems...) and her daughter disappears after they run off the road. The remainder of the film is about the mother's search for her daughter and the truth behind her daughter's dreams, and the town in general...
Honestly - the above synopsis is about all I could make of the film. The story is convoluted and confusing and ultimately centers around witch-hunting and other played-out themes. I remember playing the video-game several years ago and liking it quite a bit - but 95% of the events that took place in the film, I have no recollection of from the game. The acting is some of the worst I've seen from a big-budget film - almost EVERY line coming out of EVERY actor's mouth seeming so wooden and cliché as to be actually infuriating. The CGI is FAR over-done and many scenes would have been more effective had they been a bit more understated. The good points - a few decent scenes and set-pieces that were suitably "creepy" and kept true to the atmosphere of the game, but seriously - that's it - and unfortunately, that doesn't carry a film for me. I've definitely seen FAR worse films, but I really enjoyed pretty much nothing about SILENT HILL. I understand that it has a lot of supporters, though I can't possibly understand why - personally, I'd say to skip it unless pretty much everything else is out at the video store or play the game instead...3/10