What a trainwreck of a film

Rating: 2/10 (22 August 2006)

I hardly know where to begin on this one. I almost imagine that it was hip and cool the first couple of times movies were made based on video games; people got together and thought it was going to be awesome. Look at what we've got now, a fairly diverse assortment of video game inspired movies, but can you name one of them that's well done, or did well in the box office? Tomb Raider? Silent Hill fails on so many levels that it's hardly even a horror movie. The pacing of the film, very important for keeping up suspense, is completely skewed; you'll have a "frightening" and "suspeceful" scene followed by an altogether too long boring scene. Then it'll cut back to more "scariness" and, what, we're supposed to jump right back into being scared? The acting, from most of the main characters, is decent at best, but don't expect anything much out of the male lead. The script of Silent Hill reaches a level of worthlessness rarely found outside of an Uwe Boll flick. So a little girl who got immolated by town zealots uses "hate" to doing supernatural things? Blind fanaticism is a great counter to evil? Praying to god when you're SOL is fine, but organized religion is bad? Right, I haven't heard that one before. Remember in Resident Evil: Apocalypse, when at the end it was revealed that the Nemesis wasn't the bad guy, but it was the evil corporation that was naughty? Alessa's not bad, she's just misunderstood! And damned if blind faith didn't have a hand in making her that way.
About the only good thing you can say about Silent Hill is that the special effects are excellent... until the next big-budget horror movie comes along, and blows this one away. I give it a 2, because of special effects, and because Laurie Holden is beautiful in leather as the cop who helps Rose out. If you can manage to watch Silent Hill without paying for it (like me, I work at a video rental chain), you'll still want to think long and hard before flushing two hours down the toilet.