A COMPLETE WASTE OF MONEY ***Contains Spoilers***

Rating: 2/10 (8 May 2006)

I saw this movie a few weeks ago and just now have been able to sit down and write a review that sounds intelligent, instead of writing from my gut. As it is, this review is still totally out of my league as I have to keep fighting the urge to say "This movie sucked!" But being as I don't write reviews like that, I will do the best I can to be objective and give the facts as they appear to me.
The story starts out with Rose Da Silva (Radha Mitchell) taking her daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) to the abandoned town of Silent Hill after the little girl continuously has nightmares and tries to "go home" which would amount to her killing herself if she were able to make it "home" in her dreams.
On the way to the town a little girl runs into the path of the Da Silva's car resulting in an accident. Of course when Rose wakes up, Sharon is gone. She goes to the town of Silent Hill where everything is an eerie gray.
She begins looking for her daughter only to find the locals (if you can call screaming children burned to a crisp) "locals," inhospitable.
On the way out of town Rose finds a strange woman Dahlia Gillespie (played with tragic realism by Deborah Kara Unger, the only good performance in the entire movie) whom she tries to talk to, but the woman's ramblings are not only macabre, but frightening. Rose tries to leave town only to find that she is trapped.
It is when she goes back to her car that she finds officer Bennett, none too happy to see her (after chasing her over the bridge and wrecking her motorcycle) and Rose is arrested. However, upon trying to leave the town, both women find they are trapped and more of the locals show upthis time in the form of creepy mannequins with no arms, which spew molten ash, disintegrating anything it touches.
From this point on out I was totally lost.
I have been told that like the game, the movie isn't supposed to make much sense. I don't play video games and had no idea of this. Wish I had known before I wasted my money. When I left the theatre I had just as many questions as when I went inand that is never a good thing. The haphazard way they attempted to tie everything together did nothing to help the plot or in any way add to the story line. It simply made it more confusing and difficult to follow.
There is great debate as to whether or not Rose and Cybil die or if they are in a parallel universe/Silent Hill. Go to any movie message board and see so called experts claiming they have the correct answer and everyone else is wrong.
Does this add to the confusion? Yes. What a waste of money. If a movie is not going to make total sense by the time I am done watching it, I wish they'd let me know so I could avoid wasting my money on it.
This movie is one better left alone until it gets to your local dollar theatreif you have one, because I would not even spend the price of a rental on it.