Good intentions, questionable execution.

Rating: 5/10 (24 April 2006)

I remember when I heard about Silent Hill being made into a movie and thinking, "wow, what a great opportunity to make a video game movie that isn't a mindless action flick." However, I also felt skeptical thinking, "but it will probably miss the point of what makes Silent Hill great and use a prepackaged set of horror clichés to sell tickets." Then came the teaser and following trailer for the film. My hopes sky rocketed seeing how well the settings and atmosphere was being portrayed. But when I finally saw the film, the more and more I think about it, the less I enjoyed the final product. What went wrong? Gans had it right converting the eeriness of the town and even kept some of the locals absolutely identical to their video game counterparts. What he didn't keep was the plot, and thats where the train wreck takes place. It turns out that the director still felt the itch to mess with Silent Hill's central story. I can understand the need with changing a script to do better in the film medium, but this change is so fundamental, that you can safely say that the game and the movie are completely different tales. On the technical side, the movie suffers from the fact that, despite being a full two hour movie, Silent Hill barely has any character development whatsoever. Dialogue is minimal and the quotes are pretty forgettable. Also, in spite of creating said changes to the plot, the movie is still stuck using video game logic to advance the story. In a game, its perfectly natural to impulsively pick up objects from strange places and make wild assumptions based on vague clues. In movie logic, this doesn't make as much sense, which throws off the films believability. Finally, the film misses out on a big factor of what makes Silent Hill unnerving. That is the overwhelming sense of loneliness and helplessness. This does not translate in the film. There are many secondary characters assisting the main protagonist and barely any time is spent in the Dark World, where most of the real horror takes place. The movie could have been great but because of odd writing decisions, an unfocused plot, meandering characters, a pointless side plot about a coal fire, and bad lines makes this an utterly average movie.