Unapolagetic fanfare for the win.

Rating: 8/10 (23 April 2006)

I kept myself in the dark prior to seeing this film, largely because I did not entirely trust anyone to adapt Silent Hill to film successfully, or even semi-successfully. I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of what I love about Silent Hill is here, and in exactly the way it was originally envisioned, but the faithfulness of this work is also why most people will inevitably walk away confused, or disappointed.
As a film, this is not everything I could've asked for. Ideally, the film would be cold, alienating, unnerving, and more thematically unified. For me to be completely happy with it, I'm fairly certain it would have to be filmed in such a way that absolutely everyone else would hate it but me. Unfortunately, some people besides me still liked it, but hopefully it will gross enough at the box office to warrant a sequel that's even more alienating to people not in its target audience.
In other words, Christopher Gans has succeeded in creating a movie for fans. The shots are amazing. The creatures are amazing. The music is amazing, and the story is (apparantly, judging by the confused reactions of reviewers across the country) nearly impossible to follow if you're completely ignorant of the franchise. All of the elements of this film that work are the elements that are unapologetically ripped directly from its source material. While these elements have been successfully recreated, Gans doesn't really do anything new with them.
However, it's obvious that his intentions were not to convert anyone, and every negative review I read further validates my thinking that this movie is nothing but fanfare loosely strung together with a plot and some sub-par acting. What he's really done is roughly the equivalent of writing a novel adaptation of a film. There's really nothing wrong with that when the source material is as strong as Silent Hill.
As a fan, I felt this was the movie's greatest strength, but being realistic, if I didn't love Silent Hill as much as I do, I would've thought this film was terrible as well. Neither the acting, or the writing are really where they need to be, and there's entirely too much exposition towards the end. Stopping the film to play catch-up at the end was a mistake. This is Silent Hill, not the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Some things were meant to be inferred.
Fortunately, when Pyramid Head flayed a woman alive, nothing could've been further from my mind than any flaws the film might've had. All in all, I consider this film a success, and it grossly exceeded any expectations I could've had.