You people are ON CRACK

Rating: 1/10 (11 November 2007)

First off, how does a film this bloody awful rate a 6.5 out of 10?! I suppose if you're an attention span-deprived adolescent who does nothing but play video games endlessly, and whose neural cortex has been so totally overstimulated that the only thing that will prompt you to move or register a flicker of human emotion (other than ennui or blind anger) is either a can of Red Bull or a jolt in the testicles with a taser, then have at it. This movie is for you.
However, if you're actually interested in a film with recognizable human beings, something that vaguely resembles a story and any kind of connection to what is generally acknowledged as the real world, then you better fuggidabowdit. Where to begin...
Okay, the opening scene pretty much sets you up for what to expect for the next 2+ hours (?! and I thought "The Passion of the Christ" felt long): you've got a young couple lives in a house that's RIGHT NEXT to a two-lane blacktop that's busy with truck traffic in the middle of the night, which is also poised RIGHT NEXT to a waterfall with a sheer drop of what looks to be at least a hundred feet; they've got a nine-year-old daughter WITH A HISTORY OF SLEEPWALKING - and yet...this little girl is somehow able to leave the house in the middle of the night; there are no safety features whatsoever to prevent her from wandering off their property either into traffic, or to stand poised on the verge of this precipitous cliff; and - AND (this is the big one) the girl's mother's solution to her daughter's problem is to IMMEDIATELY head off to this abandoned, haunted town the name of which her sleepwalking daughter has been repeatedly crying out during her somnabulistic states. I think we have a winner for Parent of the Year...
This film takes place in a 'reality' that bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the one that you and I live in - and I'm not talking about the haunted town of Silent Hill here. I'm talking about a 'reality' where a young mother, alone with her young daughter at a gas station in the middle of the night, out in the middle of nowhere, as she is walking into said gas station to pay, blithely walks past a scary, dominatrix-looking bike cop WHO'S HEADING STRAIGHT FOR HER SUV WHERE THE DAUGHTER IS SITTING IN THE FRONT SEAT WITH THE WINDOW HALFWAY DOWN and doesn't even so much as turn her head as they pass one another. WTF..? And - oh, get this - she walks into said gas station/restaurant, whose parking lot outside is conspicuously empty of any other vehicles apart from her own and that of the scary bike cop, and...the place is FULL of people! Where are their cars and trucks parked? This movie can't be bothered with such 'mundane' details.
And that's a HUGE problem and here's why: look, I'm not one of these nigglers who demands that a movie adhere absolutely to some perfect resemblance to the real world. Far from it. BUT when you're making a movie with fantastical elements, like those in SILENT HILL, the more closely and rigorously you define a 'real world' to contrast with the fantastical you're going to create, the more impact that latter world will have on the audience. But if the 'real' world in which your characters live is, in and of itself, so totally disconnected from anything even vaguely resembling the waking world, then its bound to seem much, much less impressive when an armless, headless ghoul stumbles out of an auto graveyard and vomits black acid on someone.
Another thing: films with fantastic elements - sci-fi, horror, fantasy, etc. - need to establish, if only obliquely, what the 'rules of the game' are. That never happens in SILENT HILL. Basically, Rhada Mitchell gets to the haunted town, lose her daughter and then spends the next two hours running and stumbling from one lurid, horrific set-piece to another with absolutely no sense of progression or logic. And the fact that the viewer has only the vaguest sense of why she's doing what she's doing is only further infuriated by the fact that instead of at least attempting to lay out some ground rules or sense of purpose, the movie spends seemingly endless amounts of time and energy to fill in a totally absurd and utterly derivative backstory that supposedly makes this all make sense (which it most assuredly does not).
Oh, what a waste - of my time; of millions that could have financed 20 independent features (at least maybe 10% of which might have turned out good, giving viewers a 200% return on investment, so to speak); of the talents of a lot of good actors (Sean Bean, Rahda Mitchell, Kim Coates, etc.) and crew (Carol Spier's production design is, as always, top notch). Notice how I DON'T mention the director, Christophe Gans (go back to France, game-boy!) or credited writer Roger Avary (give back your Oscar now, Roger!). Yes, an utter waste.
I hated this film and if you liked it, chances are I hate you too.