If only the plot could keep up with the imagery

Rating: 5/10 (30 April 2006)

If everything in Silent Hill was on a par with the visuals, this would be a monster of a movie - pardon the pun.
Not since The Cell has a movie contained imagery so macabre and disturbing, that their sheer other-worldliness alone almost manages to elevate the movie to a level that can only be described as artistic terror.
Based on the video game franchise, the movie features uniformly good performances by Aussie Radha Mitchell as Rose, a mother whose daughter mysteriously vanishes on the outskirts of the deserted ghost town, and Laurie Holden, who plays a motorcycle cop who made me discover I have a fetish for leggy women in leather.
Regrettably, however, the entire plot line completely disintegrates as the movie progresses, becoming confusing, unfocused, muddled and dumb, taking a decent setup involving a ghost town abandoned in the 1970s after underground coal seams were set ablaze (and burning still) and just letting the story trickle away like water expelled to put out the fire.
Writer Roger Avary, who has amassed some impressive credits working with Quentin Tarantino on Pulp Fiction and True Romance, does manage to give the film a decent (if telegraphed) ending, but somewhere between a good start and a decent second act, the whole movie just falls apart to a point beyond repair.
Still, the movie has value if only for the visuals, and scenes of pure, twisted horror.
Like Pavlov's dog, you'll come to squirm in your seat whenever you hear that damn fire siren.