It's good enough to get me intrigued in the game, but not THAT good overall

Rating: 5/10 (7 February 2015)

"Silent Hill" works in a lot of ways, with a creepy atmosphere, unsettling sets and good cinematography at first, but the ending is where the film stops working. It's about a woman named Rose who takes her adoptive daughter to a mysterious town named Silent Hill. 9-year-old Sharon has been mumbling things about this place in her sleep and exploring the little girl's past seems like a good idea since she's adopted and clearly troubled. Unfortunately, when Rose and Sharon arrive in the town, everything turns into a nightmare. The two are separated and while Rose tries to find her daughter she discovers that the town is overrun by hideous creatures. The surviving inhabitants of Silent Hill have gone mad and scramble to survive while avoiding the bizarre semi hourly transformations between the now ruined town and a place straight out of hell. To escape it appears that Rose will have to find out the secrets of Silent Hill.
The film is set up like a horror survival video game (which is pretty appropriate considering the source material), with the protagonist finding herself in a location she can't escape, hopelessly outmatched by creatures that seemingly come out of nowhere and running around trying to piece together what is going on. She's trying to figure out how the town of Silent Hill became the way it is, how to escape and where her daughter has disappeared to. Unfortunately, the film doesn't follow through on the premise and there is little actual detective work in the end. You expect our protagonist to run around dodging the locals and the creatures, interrogating and investigating but we simply get an explanation of the events instead of having the protagonist (and the audience) piece it together from clues. Another oddity is that for long periods of time the strange creatures disappear almost entirely from the film. Despite the 2hr+ running time, there's not that much monster horror in this creepy monster movie. It feels like the story was cobbled together from way too many sources and not having played the games, I can only theorize that this is the case. As mentioned earlier, the further the film goes along, the less it becomes suspenseful or frightening. The creepy visuals that were often subtle slowly disappear and are replace with a gigantic set piece that tries but isn't impressive. When we are served the explanation for what is going in Silent Hill, the background stories and the characters delivering them are so broad they're laughable. It's a big disappointment even if you are not familiar with the games because you know there's got to be a ton of material that has been carefully expanded upon and developed over the years; there's no way this nonsense turned into a franchise of video games.
There are a lot of good elements in "Silent Hill" and if you're a fan of the games, you'll probably like the movie. It's not all bad, but it doesn't live up to the potential it displays at the beginning and is ultimately a disappointment. (Dvd, October 4, 2012)