"This town is the grain, and I am the reaper."

Rating: 6/10 (24 April 2006)

Well it took many tries, and sub sequentially, many failures, but it has finally been done; a good movie-going experience based off of a video game. French filmmaker Christophe Gans and Pulp Fiction screenwriter Roger Avery have brought to the big screen a completely faithful film experience that lives up to the game's bizarre imagery and twisted reality, and surprisingly it doesn't rely heavily on fast editing and loads of CGI effects. The film is an experience; much like the Silent Hill games, you journey into the darkness and spiral down into a hellish nightmare that has you coming face to face with your worst fears, and no one can hear your screams in the town of Silent Hill.
The film isn't perfect it does have a few issues that have to be overlooked in order to enjoy this movie. One of the problems is the films running time, two hours may not sound like a very long movie, but Silent Hill is a dreary, very slow-moving journey into the unknown, and much like the games, when you're not being chased or attacked by a bunch of creatures the experience is rather dull. Thankfully Gans, working along side creature make-up effects creator Patrick Tatopolos, whose previous films include Independence Day and Underworld, have really created some truly ferocious monsters that inhabit the ghostly town, adding just the right amount of freakishly scary and psychologically "that's screwed up!" edginess to the film. Gans' never pulls any of his punches with the blood or gore either, which only made some of the scenes seem to stick in your mind a little longer after having left the theater.
However when these amazing looking creatures aren't on screen is when the film seems to falter. The Silent Hill games were really about getting a spine-tingling delight out of creeping through dark, rotten and rusty corridors in near total darkness, just waiting for something evil to reach out and grab you. The movie does seem to have a problem of moving really, really slowly, but then again this is very similar to the games. Like last year's big screen adaptation of Sin City, Silent Hill also stays very close to the look, feel, style, pace and sound of the games, heck, they even went ahead and decided to use the entire soundtrack from the game throughout the film, which worked wonderfully, and the film also puts Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" to amusing use. Silent Hill isn't another Tomb Raider or Resident Evil clone, it's a monster all its own. What is also strangely unique is that the majority of the cast is female (there's really only two male leads in the entire film), and the main character doesn't run around fully armed to the teeth with semi-automatics blasting away baddies and using stylish kung fu and is heavily experienced and trained in combat; she's just an average mother and for the most of the time is completely defenseless; this is a totally different ballgame all together.
The plot of the film revolves around a sick little girl named Sharon DaSilva, who sleepwalks at night and constantly talks about a place called Silent Hill, which she's never been to before. Her mother, Rose is played by Radha Mitchell (you might remember her from Pitch Black or Man on Fire), and she decides to take Sharon to the town of Silent Hill, hopefully looking for answers for what's wrong with her daughter. As it turns out Silent Hill is a ghost town that has been restricted and locked away from the public, supposedly because the fires which destroyed the town and pretty much everyone in it a long time ago are still a hazard and still burn deep underneath the town. This doesn't stop Rose from trying to get Sharon to Silent Hill, but once they arrive in town strange and unexplainable things start to happen. The town is covered in a constant thick fog that showers down ashes like falling snow. Rose looses her daughter in the mysterious town and sets out on foot to find her, and along the way she meets several strange people and shes constantly attacked by various demonic creatures that are waiting around every corner. What happened to this town? Why does her daughter keep mentioning it? And what evil lurks deep within this Hell-on-Earth?
This is a very different kind of video game movie; it's slow paced, confusing and visually fascinating. This horror-thriller doesn't use fast edits and quick "jump scares" to shock audiences, instead it uses brutally dark and haunting imagery and bizarre and insane looking monsters to scary the living hell out of you. The story is just as foggy as the town itself, but much like when I was only ten-years-old and used to watch episodes of ER, even though I didn't fully understand exactly what was going on at any given moment, I did however, get the jest of it, and to one degree or another did understand it, just not completely. The film's ending might leave some people scratching their heads but if you've played the games you'll know that this is really just a set up for a possible sequel. Silent Hill is an interesting, but certainly flawed film, and it's a uniquely disturbing trip into a maddening darkness that I can't quite remember the last time I experienced something quite like it in the theaters, and that's why I'm recommending you check out the film, especially if you're not only a fan of the games, but also a fan of real horror movies that aren't filled with stupid teenagers and slapped with a weak PG-13 rating that seem to be a dime a dozen these days; Silent Hill is a rarity.