Pathetic in nearly every way and so poorly directed it will give you nightmares . . . and not in the intended way.

Rating: 2/10 (2 September 2006)

To begin, I am not a fan of the game; in fact I have never played it. So the game fans who are only concerned with its "accuracy" to the game (which is, by definition, uninteresting film making) will get absolutely nothing from this review.
Beginning with the screenplay, "Silent Hill" is an ugly smattering of unconnected scenes with hardly any discernible plot or characterization. Despite attempts near the end to bring together the preceding into a coherent whole, the film really is a series of slightly varying sorts of chase scenes so much so that the entire film could be reduced to only 20 minutes in length. Those scenes aren't even original or interesting; in fact they are simply one cliché after another until it almost makes one sick. The characters follow much the same pattern--they are one-dimensional, weak clichés of the standard horror movie "mother with missing child," "husband with missing wife," and "troubled child." Overall, the script and story can only be described as pathetic.
Meanwhile, the acting, while not particularly impressive and quite hampered by the lack of characterization, is probably the best point of the film. The only actors who have even a slight (and they only have that) possibility for performance are Sean Bean and Radha Mitchell, who are adequate performers and do what they can, adding a bit to an otherwise truly pathetic film and saving it from deserving a 1 rating.
However, the aspect of the film that truly destroys it is the direction. Christophe Gans obviously did not fully think through the film before making his decisions, as evidenced by his opening, which immediately and heavy-handedly set up a world of diametric opposites and obvious morality. The film opens with (what Gans was intending to be) a frightening scene to set up the fear, and it is appropriately dark and menacing; however, what follows is a shockingly brightly colored scene (seemingly even without a normal "56" filter) showing the loving bond between a mother and child before the true horror suddenly begins. Then, the film does not really follow through with this obvious black and white sort of universe, instead attempting to subvert its own moral compass time and again and yet never adjusting its lighting scheme accordingly. Furthermore, the overly-quick, MTV-style editing and bouncing among useless extra camera angles is also nothing short of disgustingly annoying and serves to reduce the tension in the film's few attempts at said tension. Finally, Jeff Dana and Akira Yamaoka's score does not do the film any favors, switching back and forth between being wildly clichéd and wildly inappropriate.
Finally, no review of a film filled with this many special effects would be complete without a word on them: awful. First, the sheer amount of effects shots is way, way too high, to the point that the film is more like a cartoon than film. Second, the animation is often truly pathetic, as in the shot of the skyline of Silent Hill that resembles a bad matte painting and the awful field of plants around the mother and child in the beginning. No one should watch a film for special effects, but even for those of you who do, this film needs to be avoided.
All told, "Silent Hill" is not one of the worst films ever made, but it's close. The screenplay, direction, and score are all extraordinarily bad and the latter two are often inappropriate for the moods intended by the former. And as if those weren't enough, the pathetic characterization precludes any good acting and the CGI is unbelievably bad and so overdone that the film watches more like a badly drawn cartoon than a true film. Perhaps there are interesting tie-ins to the game that would make a fan of the game enjoy the film, but watching it as simply a film, it is truly pathetic and should be avoided by all, even those who enjoy bad horror films.