Average as a movie but good as a game adaptation

Rating: 6/10 (15 August 2006)

Horror game franchise comes to life on the big screen, and the flavour of the games is well captured.
Silent Hill, as a game, always preyed on our deepest darkest fears. It projected an innate wrongness and the monsters in it were designed to defy what we had come to expect from horror - add to that a wretched doomed atmosphere and hideous graphics which propagated a genuinely sinister and foreboding facade. This was the strength of the Silent Hill games, and any successful movie would have to go to town to create the same effect.
Silent Hill, as a movie, succeeds superbly at this, certainly for the first half of the story. The locations, the events, some of the characters and *even* some of the camera shots are dead ringers for the game, and those familiar with it will find themselves totally engulfed in the Silent Hill world.
The buildings, the monsters, the foggy town, even the change to Dark Silent Hill are absolutely bang on the money and make afficionados feel completely at home.
The story is close to the original game; a woman, Rose (Where it used to be a man, Harry Mason) drives her daughter (Sharon) to the town of Silent Hill but has an accident. Her daughter disappears from the car (In exactly the same way as the game) and the movie is then her hunt to find her.
Throughout the movie you'll notice homages to the sequels of the original game - and all of them are very convincing and clearly time has gone into producing a movie with this level of accuracy to the games.
As such, Silent Hill was a serious horror game and the gore factor and hideousness of monsters and deaths is exactly what you expect. There is even a fair bit of imagination going on to give it a creative edge.
The acting is staple, without being anything outstanding, but what else would you expect from Hollywood horror? Sean Bean has a rather small role as the husband/father and it seems slightly strange to see him in this kind of movie, and putting on a pseudo-American accent which never convinces. As Rose, Laurie Holden does a fair amount of screaming and looking panic stricken - exactly what she needs to do.
The direction is very good indeed - it's a fast moving film and never slows down unnecessarily. The special effects are also very impressive - lots of CGI went into this to create convincing monsters and atmosphere effects, and they work very well indeed.
Overall, as a story it's not bad although there are several comical leaps of logic - but you'll forgive them. It does lose its way ever so slightly in the second half where it goes for maximum confusion, but in a way it's actually the best method because the game went the same way in terms of plot. It just perhaps doesn't translate to the big screen so well. But the makers did as good a job of making it as simple as they could while remaining faithful to the game.
Horror fans will get a fair kick out of it although recognising it's not the greatest horror one will ever see, and devotees of the games will certainly enjoy its accuracy.