Absolutely Horrendous

Rating: 1/10 (23 April 2006)

Grade: D- (2 out of 10) Only if the movie were as good as the poster.
Only if the movie were as good as the poster. Silent Hill does about as much wrong as a movie can do. Really, the only good things I remember are the cinematography and the music. The acting is horrendous, and I'm judging on a horror-movie level here, so it was really bad. Radha Mitchell is one of the worst actresses I've ever seen. She was horrible in Man on Fire, and she's even worse here. She doesn't even have a chilling scream. Isn't that the prereq for getting a part in a horror movie? Her saving grace was that everyone else was so bad, so after a while I just got used to it.
Here's a plot overview: There is a kid that is a little bit crazy. She runs off in her sleep and says "Silent Hill." Mom, Rose, takes kid to creepy ghost town called Silent Hill that she found on the internet (damn you internet and damn you mapquest). Things go very wrong in the ghost town.
That's really all I understood from the plot. If you're like me and haven't played the games, you won't understand a single thing in the movie. From what I've gathered, even if you have religiously played the games you'll be pretty confused. Silent Hill cops out by using 10 minutes of exposition towards the very end to try to explain the entire movie. The problem is that by that point I really didn't care, it still didn't make sense, and the movie could have dropped hints along its excruciating two plus hour running length to make the rest of it more bearable. The strange thing is that by the end I wanted less explanation and more...well, I really just wanted it to end.
The entire first hour and a half could have easily been condensed into about thirty effective minutes (and that's being generous with the time). It didn't help that there was a completely useless subplot involving Chris, Rose's husband. The only reason Chris was added in the first place was because the screenplay initially had no male characters in it. Great job Hollywood producers: green-light a crappy video-game-based movie, and then find ways to make it even worse. Bravo.
Granted the screenplay, especially the dialog, is downright laughable. Horror movies always have bad dialog, but usually its bad and funny. In Silent Hill, not so much. For example: Cybil: "They say this place used to be haunted." Rose: "I'd say they were right." I admit, I did giggle at that one, but there is much worse. In fact the dialog might be the only thing scary enough to make you jump out of your seat. There isn't a single jump-out-of-your seat fright or, more importantly, moment of tension in the entire movie (unless you find break dancing zombie-like things frightening). There are some loud noises, lots of darkness, and some neat special effects, but that's about it. There's plenty of violence and gore for the horror fans, but almost all of it is towards the end. Though there is a part towards the middle where a young girl has her skin ripped off her body that woke me up along with the rest of the theater...and I'm not even a fan of gore.
The movie was so bad that the people sitting next to me passing comments at the movie were much more entertaining than the actual movie. Don't get me wrong, I think that talking in a movie is a cardinal sin punishable only by the most powerful, deepest, darkest hellfire. These people deserve praise, not punishment, for entertaining me for free because I surely wasn't being entertained by the movie I paid $7 for (heck, $14 if you count my bored out of her mind girlfriend).
From what I hear, the game requires a quick trigger finger, but also a good amount of brains and puzzle solving skills. Ironically the movie is a brainless puzzle that isn't worth solving even if there is an answer. I can guarantee this will be on my bottom five of 2006 list; through April it's the worst I've seen yet.