It makes up to the games, is visually stunning, but lacking in some respects

Rating: 5/10 (23 April 2006)

Silent Hill is a popular video game series which made its debut on the original Playstation over 6 years ago. It was based on the imaginary town of the same name, where the player had to solve puzzles and fight through hordes of hideous monsters, throughout a landscape constantly morphing between an eerie foggy realm to a terrifying nightmare like domain after the sounding of an air raid siren. The games are widely considered as being packed full of suspense and artistic imagery, with a suspenseful soundtrack and highly imaginative and intricate plots.
Those of you who are interested enough to make it this far may begin to comprehend how an ambitious adaptation to film this video game franchise would likely be. A fast paced pop-corn movie seen with such adaptations as Doom and Resident Evil would not do. And to accurately convey the horror experienced by Silent Hill game players something with more realism than an entirely CGI movie (as seen with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within) is requisite. Herein Silent Hill exceeds all its predecessors.
The film opens with Rose (Radha Mitchell) shortly followed by Christopher (Sean Bean) chasing after their sleep walking daughter Shannon (Jodelle Ferland )as she nearly plunges to her doom at a nearby waterfall, who once rescued is persistently repeating the name "Silent Hill", a town now evacuated due to an underground coal fire still burning 30 years on. It seems that Shannon's episodes are worsening despite her medication. Rose decides to drive Shannon to this town so that she may remember some sort of dark past. On the way we are introduced to a wiry female cop Cybil (Laurie Holden), who seems to think Rose is mistreating her daughter enough to pursue her, leading to a car crash which leaves Rose stranded in the middle of Silent Hill, with Shannon no where to be seen.
After seeing the spooky and deserted town we are quickly introduced to the nightmare realm and first set of monsters. Whilst searching for Shannon, Rose makes her way through hellish surroundings, fleeing from a terrifying demon "Pyramid Head" (a character from one of the video games), and is eventually led to a group of cultists, led by sinister Christobel (Alice Krige), who are some how responsible for the towns predicament.
The film certainly contains both the spooky look of the foggy and snowy peaceful side of the town, and the dark, oily and bloody look of the hellish equivalent from the game. The monsters look pale, cold and evil and are perfect recreations of the game characters, especially Pyramid Head, despite minimal CGI modification. Camera angles are used well (sometimes copying the angles used by the game) as is the sound track (often exactly the same as in the games, one for the fans) , which both put the viewer on edge. The audio and the visuals make the film as close to the audio and visuals of the game as can possibly be, and will strike non game fans as the most intriguing area of the film.
But regardless, is Silent Hill a good horror film? The beginning of the film looks very promising, containing a spooky sounding piano piece natural to films of the genre. The looks and sounds of the remainder of the film are stunning make an excellent nightmarish atmosphere, and are possibly the most memorable part of the film. However the character interaction and dialogue are underwhelming, it feels as if much of the film simply doesn't work. Once in the town, the screenplay gives the impression that Rose is being controlled by a game pad as she fumbles about a school and a hotel looking for clues, it is as if we are watching a demo of the game. The dialogue is just as monotonous and primitive as in the first game on the now dated Playstation 1, Rose and Cybils dialogue seems almost laughable at times and Alice Krige's character is essentially the Borg Queen as seen in Star Trek: First Contact, minus the synthetics. English Sean Bean's American accent is as poor as it is pointless. And what of the shock value, where you are made to jump out of your seat, as expected in horror films? Despite many potential chances, only a couple are made, and feeble ones at that. Apart from the hellish looks of the scenery and monsters, it seems the only attempt to satiate a horror audiences appetites was to fill scenes with gratuitous and unnecessary gore.
And the plot. The original plot consisted of some cultists trying to use a magical girl named Alessa (also the key character in the film) to summon their god. The plot in the film is more about a maltreated manifesting spirit taking revenge on those who did it harm, similar to what we have already seen in The Ring and the even the more recent horror movie An American Haunting, released shortly prior to Silent Hill. Silent Hill originally may have been a game but had an intricate storyline. Although the film closely follows the first game in the series in terms of scenes and characters, the plot has been completely altered. Is this to be expected with the release of The Da Vinci code, in principle another adaptation of some source material to film? I think not. However the storyline is told vaguely enough, with an interesting open ending, to indulge viewers to deep contemplation of what happened and why in the film.
To summarise: visually stunning and intriguing artistically, but with atrocious dialogue, ham acting, little shock value and too much gratuitous violence, but then again an interesting open ending. Perhaps this like many other adaptations is one you will either love or hate.