That Silence you Hear, is Laughter

Rating: Null/10 (29 April 2006)

What to make of this odd big-little film. It's clearly a Lynchian nightmare-scape, but it offers one too many clues to its unraveling in some of the most boring exposition put to film ever. Like DOOM, it makes the unappealing choice of translating the game to the big screen literally, even lifting camera angles, a startling sense of geography, a sequence of controller directions and more than 45 minutes of running and opening/trying to open drawers, doors and bathroom stalls. In that way, it's like nothing I've ever seen before. Not a good thing, because it's absolutely unnecessary as is the Husband's story, which eats up about a half hour too and reveals nothing we couldn't have assumed from Rose's story.
The positive side is that it's beautiful and atmospheric in an almost masochistic way. The demons are to die for, the locales are devilishly delightful and the story is an interesting one (albeit told in a bland way).
Sadly, it's just too unintentionally hilarious too often, and it really ruins the experience (unless of course you came for a good belly laugh or two). Of particular note is the frequent uttering of "Everything will be OK" at two of the most inopportune times ever. Now, maybe on paper, this was supposed to sound like "denial" but on film, the actress and director play the lines straight, which just hurts. I wish Silent Hill was a better film, because all the workings were there. But as is, it's going to be more of a curiosity than a classic. Much like "The Brotherhood of the Wolf" Gans has yet to make me care about his movies as anything more than abstract art.