Zombos Closet Review: Great Visuals, poor acting, lame dialog

Rating: 5/10 (8 May 2006)

To begin with, I must give kudos to the art direction for this film. It is a wonderful creaturefest of make-up, CGI and costuming that is quite a treat indeed. The creatures are nightmarish and the coloration of the film, when the mom goes deeper into the cursed town--especially when the siren blares as a warning that the town is going 'into the darkness'--is superb, and evokes a truly horrific mood; those embers that glow on the damned creatures' bodies, and the falling ash and pall over the town--again, quite well done.
The dialog needed much more work, however, as most of the lines were poorly written. The acting also needed more verve, especially the climactic Barker-esquire Hellraiser- styled confrontation in the church between the mom and the evil religious cult. She manages to easily walk through a congregation of crazed, girl-roasting individuals with amazing ease. And the black leather uniform on the female motorcycle police officer. Really! You couldn't get it much tighter. How DOES she get on the motorcycle dressed in those tight pants? Weak acting here, too.
Oh, yes, the plot.
Alessa, the poor girl born out of wed-lock that is roasted like a turkey by the evil religious cult, while her mom stands by helplessly, takes revenge on the titular town of Silent Hill. ThoughI am not sure if this occurred before the fires broke out in the mines, or afterwards. I am also not sure how the witch burning thirty years beforehand fits into the events with Alessa.
Anyway, from her hospital bed, the badly scarred and immobile Alessa, either through sheer malevolent will power, or by the assistance of a hellish demon (hey, maybe it's the witches familiar?) destroys the town and it's citizens, forcing their dead spirits to 'live' in a nightmare world that puts Dante's Inferno to shame. The undead citizens of the town must endure not only the hellish Limbo they have been caught in, but also must avoid the Darkness that brings Pyramid Head (see the game) and his agonies (give or take a few) to torture them.
Alessa, for some reason sends off a good version of herself as a baby, now known as Sharon, then summons it back to the town after nine years. Sharon sleep walks and blurts out Silent Hill in her sleep, so her mom, casting prudence to the wind, takes her to Silent Hill. Yes, that Silent Hill, the one with all the well-known evil cursed stuff attached to it. A place so bad, Sharon's father reads about it on the web at a famous ghosttowns.com site. This is the ABANDONED place that has had toxic fires burning beneath it for years, so much so that ash continually falls from the sky. So her mom takes her there at NIGHT, hoping to find out why her daughter keeps sleep walking and saying "Silent Hill." Along the way, they are almost stopped by a female motorcycle police officer who dresses in impossibly tight leather motorcycle garb, but her mom makes a frantic attempt to head straight into the unknown at the last minute.
Reaching Silent Hill, her mom also promptly manages to crash the car in a convenient plot-ism to keep the story rolling. She wakes up, sees that her daughter Sharon is missing, and heads into the town. The police officer eventually makes her way to the town, too, even after crashing her motorcycle on the roadway (probably couldn't reach the brake because of those tight pants).
As far as I can gather, Sharon, her mom and the police officer are actually dead, but they do not realize it. They died in their respective vehicular crashes. This is the only way I can explain why they can be affected by the creatures and hellish darkness of Silent Hill, while her husband and the others searching for them walk through the town unaffected and unaware.
Alessa has Sharon's mom go through quite a few trials and tribulations to find her (Alessa, that is), and uses her to bring the darkness into the church, where the dead cult members retreated, when the siren blared, to escape it. Much gore ensues as the evil Alessa gloats over her prey and tears them apart in a scene of CGI butchery that Pinhead would be proud of. Sharon and mom survive all this, thoughwink, winkthe evil Alessa (or demon) now lives inside Sharon. Mom and daughter walk back to the car, buckle themselves in for safety, and head home.
Of course, there is the confusing sequelization-antic, where the husband is home while mom and daughter return home, and the scene shifts between the husband in the nice sun-lit home, and the mom in the dark ominous- looking home, with Alessa/Sharon/Demon looking ominously in the background. With mom and daughter being dead and all that, how exactly does Alessa benefit from taking over Sharon's dead body? And I still do not know why the witch was burned or why the fires started in the mines.