Absolute gem of a horror film

Rating: 10/10 (7 October 2015)

-31 Days of Horror Day 1-
Few video game adaptations work as movies, about as few as I can count on one hand. But Christophe Gan's Silent Hill is a rarity in the group, a fright flick that captures the melodic ambiance and off kilter spookiness that made the games so terrifying. It doesn't one hundred percent capture the entire vibe of what made the games so special, but it comes oh so damn close, and when compared to other attempts at bringing games to life, it's a valiant effort, and a frightening addition to the horror genre. It also uses authentic music from the games compositions, by Akira Yamaoka, which gives it another leg up in the atmosphere department. Rose (Radha Mitchell) and Christopher (Sean Bean) have an adopted daughter named Sharon who suffers from sleepwalking night terrors, and cries out the name of a town in her dreams. When Rose questionably decides to bring her there and decipher her cryptic past, strange occurrences befall them. Her minivan becomes mired on a misty stretch of highway after an accident, and Sharon disappears, as she begins her search through the eerie abandoned mining town of Silent Hill. Aided by a tough chick motorbike cop (Laurie Holden) she faces unspeakable horrors and ghostly apparitions to find her daughter, and the truth. Jodelle Ferland expertly plays Sharon, and the darker version of her, Alessa, with more than a few spine shivering moments to her work. Deborah Kara Unger is excellent as the distraught wanderer Dahlia, with strange, poetic dementia and ominous ties to the central mystery. Alice Krige takes antagonist duties as the scary Christabella, a maniacal fanatic to rival Marcia Gay Harden in The Mist. Christopher follows her to the region and is aided by a local police captain (Kim Coates, stealing all his scenes like he always does), but is always one step behind. Bean, playing against his usual roughneck type is wonderful to watch as the caring father and husband, wracked with desperation and longing. The Silent Hill mythos in general has always had an unconventional, disturbingly surreal aspect to its visual and auditory palette, and the filmmakers don't let that slide in their translation from the game. The monsters, including the infamous pyramid head, are unlike anything seen before, always with an abstract biology, the music is an ethereal quilt of lilting melodies and grinding, industrial groans that blankets the film in an unshakable, beautiful sense of dread and buried tragedy, like the town itself, shrouded in an unending curtain of falling ash and fog laden gloom. The director wisely casts mostly obscure actors from indie and cult fare (my favourite kind), which give the proceedings a feeling of detachment from straightforward Hollywood horror, and a more free flowing, atmospheric tone that works its way into your head and tags along into your dreams.