See this movie

Rating: Null/10 (23 April 2006)

Silent Hill is an excellent modern horror movie that completely avoids the trappings of its contemporaries by giving tone and character first priority and eschewing the cheap scare tactics and gotcha! surprise jolts that have become so cliché and indicative of a lack of true vision in the genre. I was almost completely unaware of the game before seeing this movie, and I was not affected either way, I think; this film stands solidly as a nightmarish world that completely engulfs the viewer and has its own perfectly realized set of rules and logic. I do not understand Roger Ebert's lack of "understanding" of the film - everything that needs to be understood is explained in an artful, seamless manner. The strengths of this film are many, but what stands out (as Ebert did actually mention) is the incredible attention to set detail and the horrific and painterly style in which the denizens of Silent Hill are brought to life. We, as a modern audience, are now so accustomed to seeing CG elements in fantasy films that our brains acknowledge them, but still quickly accept the just barely perceptible non-reality of it all; surprisingly, Silent Hill achieves most of its thrills the old-fashioned way, sans computer, and the effect is breathtaking. You can really FEEL the difference - the buildings, the creatures, the danger is all present on screen, in such a human-scaled way. This movie is one of the most visceral I have ever seen, and is the most engrossing horror film since the first Hellraiser; I would even put it alongside such psychological horror classics as Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. And like The Shining, the location itself is a character, and a hauntingly fascinating one at that. Yes, it is that good. The acting is first-rate, the screenplay by Roger Avary is tight, propulsive, and downright creepy, and the ending is so anti-Hollywood-easy, that by the time you leave the theater, not only will the outlandish visions stay with you, but the more mundane and human concerns of the everyday type characters will haunt you, too. See this movie.