What One Would Expect, And a Little More

Rating: 9/10 (9 July 2006)

Short put: Silent Hill delivers.
I've never played the game, never even seen anyone else play it. From what I've read here though, and heard from one annoying individual in the theater who kept repeating it, this movie is more faithful to the game than most of the other movies like it out there.
It's what I expected really. And that's a good thing. The effects are awesome, creatures and horror scenes believable. Acting is top-notch and the soundtrack is quite good. There were a few parts where it seemed as if the game-influences demanded a bit too much "rock" from the music, something that tends to put me off. But it never really went as far as being annoying, as there was always that good melodic tune to it. There was one tune that I'm still humming, and that happens in like one of every 10+ movies I see in a theater. Meaning like once every year or 2.
Silent Hill manages to be a good, interesting horror movie without the typical angst or over-intensive action to it. It gives you breathers when you need them, and guarantees interesting and innovative action. Action being a subjective term, as this is by no means a movie about some chick who goes in guns blazing. It's all about survival.
The plot is OK and then some, but nothing spectacular. If there's one thing Silent Hill shares with other horror movies, it's that after the original mysticism and whatnot when you finally find out what's really going on, it's nothing that remarkable. You want to believe it's hell on earth, about stakes the size of a universe. And in the end, it's something so small you'd probably find far more hellish places elsewhere on earth with far more bloody histories than this particular town happens to have.
Regardless, horror flicks aren't that common. And the good ones are extremely rare. There's not really anything "wrong" about Silent Hill, save for the fact that horror is horror and never quite manages to get to the perfect score of 10 for me. I definitely recommend this movie, it's bloody, and it's gory. But not needlessly so. Few movies these days manage to pique my interest well enough to make me immerse myself as well as I did watching this one. Go see it. ;)