Only half of a good movie

Rating: 5/10 (7 September 2006)

Where's the other half! I saw this with a friend the day it came out. My friend is an avid player of the Silent Hill games, and I'd often witnessed him navigate different characters through the fog obscured landscape that is Silent Hill. So I'm not unfamiliar with the games.
First, I'll say that the first thirty or forty minutes of the movie feature some of the best horror imagery that I've seen in a long time. It's very minimal; It's simply a person walking around in a spooky town and occasionally being attacked by monsters. It works--it's incredibly effective, and I feel like the movie could go on like that (No words, mind you. No dialog. Just ambient music and imagery allowing me to view into a darker world.} for at least another hour before burning into an effective climax.
And then something happens. Other characters show up and start talking and what they are saying is insanely obvious drivel that somehow intervenes with my pleasure of watching the movie, and instead of stopping it keeps going on, with waves and waves of poorly conceived words, and there's even an expository scene in there somewhere but by that time I've given up on the Silent Hill movie. Certainly there were some interesting deaths in the style of Hellraiser, but it wasn't even remotely interesting enough.
So, basically I thought the movie started off great,with some excellent spook-out moments and minimal dialog, then went down Hill from there. I would probably watch it again, just for the visuals--and to watch Pyramid Head tear the skin off of a woman and throw it around.