"Sharon! Sharon!" "Rose!" "Sharon!"

Rating: 4/10 (15 May 2006)

People shouting for each other seems to make up half the dialogue in the film! Mind you, it's often preferable to the alternative - dialogue that doesn't really mean anything. The worst offender is the long scene where the heroine - and the audience - literally have the entire backstory explained to them in voice-over, and it *still* doesn't make much sense.
On the plus side, the three 'worlds' of Silent Hill - the damp, sunlit abandoned real town, the fog and ash-shrouded ghost town and the rotting, industrial 'dark' nightmare version - are all superbly shot, and the film's use of sound effects to establish a sense of dread is exceptional. Each time the siren sounds it gets more chilling (even if some of the CGI monsters it heralds are a bit fake-looking).
The problem is, none of the good points outweigh the fact that the story is completely incomprehensible. I came out of the film saying "That was interesting - but I have no idea what the hell was going on!"