Silent Hill takes a more literal than adaptive approach to its conversion.

Rating: 3/10 (21 April 2006)

As a game, Silent Hill draws upon and adapts many aspects of the human psyche through use of a clever and well paced story with the ultimate effect being that the player is left huddled up whimpering in the corner of their room and unable to sleep with the light off for sometimes weeks on end. As a movie, Silent Hill tries to draw upon and adapt the human psyche through use of a clever and, well just a clever story really, with the ultimate effect being that the audience member leaves the theatre after 125 minuets, probably has something to eat and then goes home to bed. All in all, Silent Hill is the most faithful game adaptation ever, however this turns out to be its fatal flaw.
As for acting, musical score, and cinematography, they all receive pass marks, by no means perfect, (Bean generally couldn't give a damn, Jodelle's monologue was a welcome addition for the films blind and under five audience, Jeff Danna has hammered Akira's delicate score into this film with no real care, the list goes on.) they are satisfactory for a horror genre at least. The film it seems failed at square one, Avary's script.
With ludicrous dialogue, hideous plot advancement, 'good cop/bad cop' changes occurring amongst characters so often you would think schizophrenia was the likely cause and careless 'mood ruining' scene changes in general, the films script should have never been approved by Sony, let alone made into this two hour 'horror epic'. It seems 'Silent Hill: The Motion Picture' would have been better suited being the premise to 'Silent Hill 5', however even giving it that honour, it would plod along and makes sense way too much to adapt the mind like the other four games did.
Gans said once in an interview that he didn't like 'jump scares' because they removed the audience from the illusion of the story, well in this film it appears that he has found a whole new way to ruin the films illusion, that is by cutting to Sean Bean (shouting 'Rose, where are you Rose?', assaulting Nuns and generally being the town vandal) whenever the films 'hell' dimension takes a hold of Mitchell, the only time the film shows real understanding of its source material.
The truth of the matter is that I'm harsh on this film because I love the series, I loved finding my daughter, got addicted to trying to find my dead wife, relished in avenging my fathers death and whole heartedly enjoyed trying to get out of my demon inhabited room. The last thing I want is to see is someone defecating over something that I have grown up with. This film was as important to me as it was to the millions who waited for Harry Potter to make his big screen debut. Unfortunately it hasn't lived up to my expectations, being an entirely different film than I imagined - a film where priorities lie on the look of the source material rather than the feel (or perhaps Gans feels that the look of the piece transcends its mood) and as a result neglects the story, instead delivering a mess and passing it off as surrealism.