Has a style of its own

Rating: 9/10 (9 July 2006)

Silent Hill was really hated by critics, and the only conclusion I can come to for that is that they don't realize its style. Sure, Silent Hill is hard to understand, but calling this movie "incoherent" or "stupid" definitely means you don't catch what it's all about.
To start, this movie is a nightmare. From the part Radha Mitchell's character crashes in the town of Silent Hill until the screen goes black and the credits role, Silent Hill will send you on a terrifying psychological free-fall. There isn't one moment that I didn't feel like I was in another world during this time. It truly feels like an actual nightmare.
Without the art direction in this film, it wouldn't be what it is. Christophe Gans has truly payed attention to capturing a dreamy, surreal look throughout the movie. All of it looks great, and the music just adds more to the nightmare feeling that the movie presents.
I'd have to say that this movie is a first for me. I've never quite seen a good horror movie, but I can tell you that this is one. It seems the producers of this movie decided to take a different approach. Instead of trying to build up suspense and then offer cheap "jump" scares, it instead grasps you by the collar of your shirt and leaves you sitting, wide-eyed, squeezing the side of your seat, waiting for something to end. While this movie probably isn't scary enough, it still does a good job of being sick, gory, and disturbing.
The movie does have some bad points that convinced me to take one star off of the perfect rating. There is a side-story of the main character's husband searching for clues as to what happened to her and this can get very distracting. Some of the lines can be quite cheesy. A lot of the back plot (or at least what you need to know for the following scenes after that, excluding the ending) is explained in one big monologue instead of bit-by-bit as would be less painful. Yes. some of this movie has bad points. There. I said it.
But the rest makes up for it. One of the things that caught my attention most in this movie was the religious cult that is trapped in the town. Critics just don't get what these people are about so they just go off and talk in their annoying, pompous voices about how stupid the lines they say are and how confusing it is that they try to explain the movie. THEY ARE F***ING CRAZY. THEY DON'T TRIE TO EXPLAIN THE MOVIE BUT THEY EXPLAIN WHAT THEY THINK IT IS.
This movie didn't make much sense on the first viewing to many people, and they hated it for that, which I believe isn't very fair. You have to pay attention to everything the characters say, to what's happening, to everything, to understand the ending and what the characters don't come right out and explain to you. Like I said, this movie has its own style, and you have to realize that before you go off and say it's stupid.
I heard a reviewer on a different site, I think his name was like Humby or something, say that the monsters in this movie have no point. Here's what I have to say to him: They do to have a point in this movie. You just didn't look at the movie enough before you said it was horrible.