SILENT HILL : video game adaptation or unique surreal horror nightmare?

Rating: 10/10 (1 April 2013)

I had the fortune to see this film before I knew it had anything to do with a video game and even though I went out and played the games and its many spawns, I've formed my opinions on what the film presented rather than what I expected of it. It came across as a surreal Gothic horror masterpiece, particularly beautifully designed and with a strong cast, dominated by the four actresses who play essential roles as the little girl is brought home and the strange religion which keeps the ghost town's inhabitants trapped forever within an 'other world'. In this respect, the film is filled with flaws; there are things that just don't make much sense and if you try to compare them to the video game you won't get any wiser. If, however, you're not restricted by these expectations, these flaws add to set of ambiguities which create a roller-coaster horror ride towards a climax that is well-worth waiting for, and one that's thought provoking and disturbing as well, although you're never quite sure why. In a nutshell, if you don't know the games, Silent Hill is like Mullholand Drive on acid. No one expects Lynch to provide exact answers to experiences which are deliberately ambiguous, dream-like and/or that can communicate simultaneously on different planes. Because this is classed as a horror film and still worse one that lies in the shadow of other horror game film adaptations like the dreadful 'Resident Evil', a set of different parameters are applied. I was lucky; I saw the film knowing none of this and came out feeling stimulated, excited and extremely creative.
The film seems to use as its central premise a very disturbing idea about how an insane sect that seems to be based on hate, sacrifice and death can demonise a child into becoming the prophesied vehicle of utter destruction. Alice Krige is perhaps the highlight of the film; her penchant for playing evil characters receives in this film a stellar expression as Cristabella, the cult's mouthpiece that has kept the village trapped in a kind of eternal purgatory (her death scene torn apart by barbed wire is not to be missed). Deborah Unger, although in a small role, is the film's only real recognition that the whole concept of the film results from Japanese artistry; her character looks like something out of Noh theatre, and her acting style is similarly exaggerated and stylized.
If you don't know anything about what the film's origins are, you're in a position of advantage because you can make your own mind up about what the constant barrage of symbols could mean and what sort of reality the characters become trapped in. In this sense it's both a journey of discovery which quickly sinks into a terrifying nightmare, one which seems to be based on the anger of the little girl who is expected to bear the universe's woes and lead to its destruction. The ambiguous ending - that the character's who have overcome what the film confronts them with, are not able to return to the real world, is both ambiguous and disturbing. Did any of it actually happen at all? Did all the characters who became trapped in Silent Hill die, seeing that they were all involved in pretty nasty car accidents? Do we ultimately exist at all?