Make it through the first 15 minutes to enjoy a great game adaptation

Rating: 8/10 (24 April 2006)

If you can push out all those expectations before you buy your popcorn and don't focus on the breast shots of the female actresses, you are in for a treat.
Silent Hill's first few scenes had me cursing myself for giving it a chance, then it turned the tables and Christophe Gans skill really shined through. The special effects were done tastefully as you can with the gory background of what the silent hill video games are. The creature actors were absolutely amazing, giving me chills just to see them move. the movie was not at all a "film" or a fine piece of dramatic cinema, more so it was an extremely well made video game adaptation. All viewers will be entertained and Resident Evil/video game fans will be enraged that Gans didn't take the Resident Evil movie to where Silent Hill has gone.
Female actors were good at their scared/confused, "not knowing what the &*#$ is going on" rolls, but did poorly when deeper, more specific emotions where at play. The opposite was true for the male actors, when there where times the father (Sean Bean) was supposed to be confused or was supposed to hold continuity with his general character, he fell short, seeming inhuman. Not fitting what i would think a father would act like in that fictional situation, I should say. But in specific scenes, portraying specific emotions, he was extremely convincing. Take when Sean Bean was walking through the school with the cop (Kim Coates), "She was here! --- I smell her cologne." when the mother (Radha Mitchell) is right there crying in the darkness.