Not a fantastic film, but "it's almost like coming home again" for fans.

Rating: 9/10 (25 April 2006)

As a movie, Silent Hill is no masterpiece. I cannot argue with critics like Ebert who give it one and a half stars. Truly, the characters are flat and predictable, the dialog and acting is sometimes laughably awful. When I saw the film, the audience seemed to often mistake poor writing for comic relief.
I can honestly say, however, that I enjoyed every second of the film, and not just in a superficial, "oh, that was kind of cool," sort of way. I thought to myself, but hesitated to admit for fear of sounding like an angry 13 year old goth kid, that I had never felt so comfortable as I had during the last 30 minutes of the film. But then I saw that another reviewer had felt that watching the film was "almost like coming home again," and honestly, that's the only way to describe it.
The images of decaying restrooms, the raining ash, and the hyperbolic violence, good, and evil, will all strike a deep chord in fans of Silent Hill. The acting, the script, even the story become irrelevant: it is the world itself that is important, and this world is recreated so perfectly it alone carries the film onto a high pedestal in the eyes of long-time fans.