A decent adaptation of the video game, but kind of lacking in areas, relies heavily on totally mimicking game scenes

Rating: 7/10 (21 July 2007)

Having just re-watched Silent Hill on DVD I'm glad I made the effort to see it in the cinema. This is a movie theatre horror if ever there was one. The set pieces are painstakingly designed to be shown on a large screen with the music and sound blaring out at full whack. On a smaller screen, Silent Hill is an enjoyable and solid addition to the slowly growing 'adapted from a video-game' horror genre, but the loss of the visual excess of seeing it in the cinema exposes a few issues with the film.
Silent Hill suffers the same problems any film adapted from a successful series of books, games or comics does; how do you go about shoehorning in this case a four game series with it's own rules, regulations and atmosphere into one 90 minute film? Writer Roger Avary and director Christophe Gans have done a pretty good job of making a film that feels like Silent Hill, but what they've chosen to omit seems odd.
For instance, there are particular speech patterns that the game characters have, and they attribute to the off kilter, disturbing ambiance. In the Silent Hill games characters often talk in normal voices but with odd tics and mannerisms, and do things like trail off mid sentence and start talking about something else entirely. Everyone in the film speaks like a normal horror film character i.e a lot of redundant 'my god they killed him' type lines and pointless swearing whenever a door's locked or something. In fact all the characters respond to emergencies with a stream of random sh*ts, f**ks and lots of 'C'mon!', which feels less Silent Hill and more Die Hard. Maybe it's just me, but the clichéd script and acting seems bizarre given how perfectly the team have translated the rest of the environment and visual ambiance of the games.
In fact, there's a very random, patchy, almost snatch-and-grab feel to the way it's been adapted. For instance, the film uses a similar plot to Silent Hill 1, but then predominantly uses monsters from Silent Hill 2, and uses the music from Silent Hill 3. It won't make a lot of difference if you've never played a Silent Hill game, but to a fan, it was extremely confusing to be assaulted with Americanised versions of several elements of the game all at once.
The soundtrack frustrates the most. The strongest element of the games has always been their sound and atmosphere, and the fact that the movies soundtrack is lifted entirely from the third game with only a few extra additions feels a tad cheap. Initially you're happy because you settle in at the audio cues, but later, when entire songs from the OST of Silent Hill 3 start pumping out you begin to feel less comfortable and more like the team couldn't be bothered to make their own so stole the ones out of the game. I'm not averse to finally finishing an American horror flick and not getting nearly blown out of my theatre seat by My Chemical Romance (House of Wax, I shake my fist at thee!) or some such, but when the song is something you've already heard and that already means something else to you in a different context it's very irritating and feels like a cheap shot. The theme tune to Silent Hill 3 means to me 'ooh, I've turned on my favourite video game, time to chill out' and I'm happy with that meaning. If they wanted to use it in the movie as well they could have at least remixed it.
These are pretty specialist gripes though, about an otherwise enjoyable and watchable horror movie and despite the facts that some areas of the adaptation are frustratingly handled, this is still a pretty good film. Firstly, although good acting is in short supply, very few scenes are dialogue heavy, and the sparse dialogue is used only to move along the storyline, which is very strong. Also the few good turns in the cast, mainly Kim Coates and the little girl who acts Alessa/Sharon, are excellent, the latter bringing an understated creepiness to her role that no amount of make-up could produce.
It's also worth noting that they didn't scrimp on the scary stuff. Without necessarily being a straight 'scary' movie, Silent Hill is packed to the gills with disturbing set-pieces. It also has an impressive amount of the red stuff flowing around for a 15. I remember coming out of the flick in the cinema and commenting to a friend 'whoa, that was pretty harsh, wonder if that'll still be a 15 once it hits DVD?'. Miraculously, especially given that less brutal or disturbing films like Reeker and Wilderness have remained 15s in the UK but been upgraded to 18s for Northern Ireland, Silent Hill is still a 15 across the board, even for the slightly more conservative NI board of classification (buy a UK DVD and it has both on the box). Impressive for a film definitely not for the faint of heart, which involves among other things several cut throats, people being burnt alive and a final set-piece showdown that has to be seen to be believed.
Ignoring my history with the video-games, Silent Hill is a fun genre flick, with convincing monsters, an extremely dark plot and a nice mix of full-pelt action horror and some juicy psychological scares. It won't win any Oscars, but it's a fun ride all the same. It probably won't be a film you'll watch more than twice, as if you own any of the games, well I'd honestly rather play them for 90 minutes than make another revisit, and the cheesiness of the dialogue and some of the acting spoils the dark splendour of the visuals, but watch it once and you'll be spooked and shocked, and hopefully have a good time in the process.