Some effective moments but ultimately disappointing

Rating: 5/10 (21 April 2006)

In which Rose (Radha Mitchell) and Christopher (Sean Bean) Da Silva's daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) keeps sleepwalking and disappearing into the woods at night. When her parents find her she keeps muttering about a place called Silent Hill. Rose finds the town listed on the internet and discovers the place is now a ghost town due to a terrible fire that occurred there some thirty years previous. As Sharon is adopted Rose suspects there must be a link and the pair drive down to the abandoned town without telling Christopher (who's reduced to a cameo part from this point onwards). But once there an apparition in the road causes Rose to crash the car and when she awakes Sharon is gone. Along with motorcycle cop Cybil Bennett (Laurie Holden) she searches the town for her daughter, instead encountering numerous hellish creatures from another dimension as well as survivors from the fire who have formed a less than benevolent religious cult. As Christopher enlists the aid of the local police force, who are just as keen to locate Cybil Bennett as they are his wife, Rose and Cybil find themselves journeying ever further into the hellish past of the town as its undead inhabitants refuse to call it a day.
Although I've never played any of the Silent Hill games, it's pretty obvious from the outset that director Christophe Gans has made huge efforts to recreate the same look and feel. Some of the tracking shots and third person camera angles are straight out of a video game (Max Payne came to mind, as I have played that one) as are the visuals. It's a double edged sword as the strenuous efforts to recreate the correct look also directly influence the pacing of the film, meaning for huge chunks of the running time nothing much happens apart from Rose wandering about different locations, occasionally chasing after a distant figure who may or may not be her daughter. In other words, it's a bit slow and boring much of the time. Although when the various undead creatures appear things certainly do pick up for a while. Pyramid Head (Tanya Allen) is no doubt a key figure in the video game, and I have to admit every scene she/it appears in carries a real charge. Coming on like something out a Hellraiser movie crossed with David Lynch attitude, this bug encrusted knife wielding apparition is straight out of your worst nightmare. As is the corridor full of scalpel wielding shroud covered nurses, and the barbed wire trussed contortionist in the toilet. When Gans is presenting us with this sort of warped imagery the movie excels, and doesn't skimp on the violent aspects either (as is becoming all too familiar these days we find the UK 15 rating allowing more and more). But set pieces aside, the rest of the film falls short by comparison. The story is way too predictable and plodding and ultimately ends up in the same sort of limbo that the characters occupy. It's a shame as Christophe Gans has undoubtedly got some talent (Brotherhood of the Wolf is proof of that) but the need to fit into the video game format means that talent is always going to be constrained here. Overall Silent Hill has more going for it than say Doom although, despite some effective moments, it ultimately ends up feeling like a big 'so what' (same as Doom). So it gets a similar score then... 5/10.