A visually stunning mess.

Rating: 6/10 (21 April 2006)

I had to checkout this movie as soon as possible due to all the dividing reviews and opinions it is getting, I just came back from a early screening and I have to say, I agree with the critics. What was that? Visually the movie was beautiful, but the plot was so stupid and the acting so poor it really destroys all that imagery. I did not understand the end, so she gets her child goes home, but can't be seen by her husband? Why? I thought it was only silent hill that deteriorated? The killing was just over the top nonsense. The first 40 minutes of the movie is pretty good, than it just completely drops the ball and gets silly, silly explanations are used to explain why the town has changed.
If I were to have made this movie, I would have probably based the whole thing around rose and her looking for her daughter, no stupid cult, no stupid husband or pointless police....just her traveling through this twisted town would have been perfect, a sort of Alice in wonderland on acid. I blame most of this on Roger Avary who obviously did not know what he was writing about, except for keeping it simple and linear he puts too much ideas in the movie and it heavily suffers for it. It is such a shame because Gans is obviously a great visual director, but a average story teller, with heavy editing this could have been a great movie.
Very disappointing 3/10