Disappointing, but not a terrible movie.

Rating: 5/10 (23 April 2006)

I usually try to avoid getting drawn in by trailer hype, but I found it hard with this movie -- the trailers made it look like they really, actually had translated the game into a movie very well.
This was, overall, not the case. The movie does a few things well, but retaining the most important aspect of the game -- its tension -- simply is not one of them.
Silent Hill itself is very well-done. The environments, with few exceptions, were very well-rendered; this is the area that really shines as far as bringing the game to the screen. With the exception of a VERY poorly-rendered intro shot (panning around the main character), the outdoor 'day' scenes are very effective. The interiors are also very reminiscent of the games.
Unfortunately, Silent Hill suffers from several problems which keep it from being a very good film.
One is the acting. While it's not bad overall, there are a couple surprisingly poor, ham-fisted performances, and not from the actors you'd think. This might be the fault of bad direction, but either way, it's there and it takes away from the movie.
Another is character development. You just don't get much of it beyond "this is what's happening and this is who it's happening to." All good stories are character-driven, and while this one is, it does not give you much at all to flesh them out. You will get about five solid minutes of backstory for the most important character in the movie... and you will get it right at the end. Not impressive, not effective.
A minor point, and one that will probably only jump out at people who have experienced the games, is the minimization and poor presentation of pyramid head. You see very little of him, and at no point is he scary.
Which leads to this movie's biggest problem. There is no tension here. It does not grab you the way the games did -- it probably will not grab you at all. There are "woah, that's strange" and "wow, that was shocking" moments (not many, but they are there), but it absolutely does not deliver on the games' main selling points -- the suspense, the tension that came from sitting in a dark room with the volume up, running around in the dark, knowing there's something out there that probably doesn't like you.a A movie theatre is a dark place... the volume is always maxed... and it's been years since I even saw the games. Even with these things going for it, though, Silent Hill the movie fails to deliver any sort of suspense.
If you loved the games, you might not enjoy this movie. If you haven't played them, you have a better chance of having fun with this one.