Slash, Gore, Blah, Blah - *yawn*. NEXT!

Rating: 2/10 (9 August 2006)

Apparently this movie derives from a computer game. So? For those of use who don't fritter away time in fantasy video games, we're none the wiser. Comparing movies to books/video games is pointless as it comes to us as one or the other. Making comparisons is senseless. No movie can ever be made the same as a book, by definition. So, moving on ... Silent Hill. Hmm, another gore/slash mock horror flick. I wonder if this type of movie will ever go away and people will get a grip on reality. Probably not, as the vast majority lives in one fantasy or another, i.e. living in the past, or wishing they were someone/some place else. People are addicted to escapism. Probably because the planet sucks as it is - war, famine, politicians etc is enough to make us all seek escapism. But why gore and horror? Why not tropical paradises or happy-ending love stories? This flick (and it is just a flick) is yet another blood spill for die-hards to add to their collection. You can count on one hand the number of these flicks that are actually worth anything or can be called good movie-making. Name one. This one is no different and had me yawning from the start. Radha Mitchell looks like a shagged out Charlize Theron on bad crack. Nice though to see B-rated British TV extra, Sean Bean has done so well for himself in the US. He pops up all over the place these days. Good on ya, mate! Within 30 Min's of this movie you'll see every tired horror movie cliché in the book, and find yourself with a finger on the 'Fast Forward' button, just to skip the director's tedious 'artistic' attempt at suspense, i.e. holding shots for 5 seconds too long. Ho-hum, wherever this story came from, it's just another platform for movie makers to exercise their malnourished imaginations and splash gore on the screen. I gave Silent Hill a 2/10 as some of the FX were pretty good, to a point, then it's all just so much droll repetition. The story (what there is of it), drops us in at the deep-end and from here it's a case of figure-it-out-as-you-watch, which rapidly becomes boring. One just has to try and imagine ANY of the content of this movie in modern day America as feasible, i.e. helpful cops and a town full of bodies no-one noticed, an unbelievable past that nobody investigates, blah, blah. One line is "We can't have civilians wandering around on their own". Huh? All 'civilians' now require a police escort? I must have missed the memo. As you watch this flick you'll be tutting and rolling your eyes every few seconds as it stumbles along, trying desperately to incorporate clichés and the lame storyline. Stick with it though; it's interesting to see what happens next, i.e. new characters with no introduction, erratic scene hopping, annoying camera work (reverse panning and vertical climbs), etc. Thirty eight minutes in, my finger was hovering over the DELETE button, but, as I was waiting for a call from Tokyo, I left it running. If the town is so bad, why is there still a sign pointing towards it on the main highway, huh, huh? Silly. Like not one of the 500 million or so casual travelers will explore the town? By the end of the first hour, the script has gone the way of the town itself; disintegrated, and you find yourself realizing that the flick is indeed taken from a PC game, where it should have stayed, safely away from the general public. Alice Krige as Christabella is clearly a fan of Katherine Hepburn and tries her best to emulate her, even down to the hair-do! The zombie nurse scene will have you laughing, i.e. they all have a 36C chest. There's also an annoying 10 Min's of colorized/grainy film where they attempt to tell the story. It merely gave me a headache. The 'theme' is your archetypal, tired old demon and witches, goodness/evil, etc ploy, which is ALWAYS bizarre, inaccurate and wholly unbelievable. Two burly men, repeatedly beating a woman on the floor with lengths of 2" water pipe are likely to kill her, yes? Not so here. She escapes with a facial abrasion. PlayDoh pipes, maybe? Anyone figure out the volcanic fallout? Was Silent Hill filmed near Pompeii? How many times have you seen the old animated barbed wire/tree branch effect? Brace yourself, they play it to death here (pun intended). You're going to love the closing scene. When someone figures it out, how about enlightening us all? My interpretation is that the camera man fell asleep and the camera drifted. Seriously, if you've nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon and feel like killing time, Silent Hill is ideal. Just check your brain at the door, you won't need it.