Two Hours of My Life That I'll Never Have Back

Rating: 2/10 (24 April 2006)

Some movies must be seen on the big screen (Star Wars). Some movies are still meant to be seen in the theatre, but not paid full price for. Silent Hill doesn't even qualify for Nothing Else on TV Pay-Per-View Movie Night. This movie was appalling.
The Creepy Little Girl in this movie is Sharon, a dark-eyed, white-faced, waif who is haunted by nightmares of a place called Silent Hill. She also sleepwalks and the movie opens with her mother Rose and father Chris screaming after her into the night because Sharon has wandered out of the house and they find her ready to plunge off a cliff.
Chris Da Silva, played in this movie by Sean Bean, Hollywood's token evil Brit, who in the past several movies he's been in has played a character who is emphatically Not a Bad Guy, has lent and wasted his talent on Silent Hill as the ethnically nebulous husband and father who thinks Sharon might be better off receiving supervised psychiatric care instead of being driven over the state line into West Virginia--and he just might be right, as we shall soon see.
Rose gets the idea in her head that she can solve Sharon's nightmares and sleepwalking issues if she sneaks off and drives Sharon to Silent Hill, WV in spite of her husband's protests, because of course this is the new millennium where men are no longer Ward Cleaver and they all have the intuition of a cinder block. Mommy knows best and Daddy may have good intentions, but he's an ignorant oaf. Sharon is Rose and Chris' adopted daughter, born in Silent Hill, WV, parked at the doorstep of the local nun-run orphanage.
Silent Hill is a town on fire. An underground fire has been burning for 30 years and now the town is deserted. While we learn how the fire started, the movie never really tells what keeps it going. We can only deduce that the fire hit a coal seam, since this a mining town after all. The inspiration for this appears to be Centralia, PA. Centralia is also a real-life town on fire after a trash fire hit an exposed coal vein in 1962. However, a fire started by burning trash is unexciting and Centralia isn't haunted by burning, shrieking spirits.
Rose first runs into trouble before she even leaves the state of Ohio. A sexy, tough-as-nails, lady cop named Cybil takes a bizarre and unwarranted interest in Rose and Sharon outside a gas station. It's left up to the viewer to try and figure out why Cybil even gives two craps about them, but she obviously does. She follows Rose out to the fork in the road at Silent Hill and the ensuing chase leads Rose crashing through the fence shutting Silent Hill off from the rest of the world and thus the nightmare begins. Maybe Cybil was having a slow night. By the end of the picture, she was likely wishing she had stuck around her own jurisdiction, in her own state, chasing speeders.
Rose's car crashes, she gets knocked out and when she comes to, Sharon has disappeared and Cybil is standing outside the car. When Rose gets out, Cybil slaps the cuffs on her and the women snipe at each other like two scorpions in a jar. Rose manages to escape from Cybil (still cuffed) and sets out to look for Sharon until Cybil finds here again and frees her from the handcuffs. Naturally, they're bosom buddies by the end of the show. The rest of the movie is spent with Rose and Cybil looking for Sharon and encountering qrotesque and terrifying demons along the way.
The town isn't completely deserted though. There are a few hangers-on. They are followers of a bizarre and unholy cult leader named Christabella. Her disciples are all pasty-faced, stupid, brutal sheep. Christabella is the only one of them who looks like she's seen the sun, although it's unclear how since the town lives in a perpetual fog. Turns out Silent Hill is a witch-huntin' n burnin' town and we get to the bottom of how the whole fire got started in the first place--namely a witch burnin' gone awry.
Without going into the rest of the details (I don't want to spoil it), suffice to say Rose finds out the whole dirty truth, she finds Sharon, Rose, Cybil, and Sharon are accused of being witches (surprise!) and Cybil gets burned at the stake (somebody has to--the female cop of questionable sexuality is the perfect fall gal for this).
This movie is absolutely atrocious. I've heard some people complain that Silent Hill didn'tdifferentiate between Christabella's apocalyptic brand of medieval Christianity and mainstream Christianity. If there are people who think the two have any relation to each other, they would think that without any help from this movie. The movie is fraught with religious imagery--weird crosses, churches and the like. Heck, even people's names--Rose, Sharon, Christabella. Is it coincidence or intentional? Hmmm. Who knows--and more importantly, who cares? This movie is awful on so many levels, it's portrayal of organized religion is the least of its problems. However, its gory and graphic nightmare sequences and scenes of blonde, busty babes slapping handcuffs on and fighting with each other will serve as an inspiration to disturbed teenage boys everywhere.