Sets up a great story, and just fails to deliver....

Rating: 4/10 (21 April 2006)

I've never played the game for more than 5 minutes, but I've watched a few friends play. The game was great for setting a mood, and messing with your head.
This however, is a movie. I saw it last night and the beginning was creepy. For those familiar with the game it stays pretty true, and keeps with it, giving away faint hints at what was happening. It's a horror and has the dialog to go with it, obvious and off timed. The Horror has a Hollywood feel in the set design and general flow, but the monsters are more of an eastern feel reminding me of the ring and the grudge.
They switch things up with a side story line, which from what I gather wasn't in the game. Now an adaptation has changes, which is normal, but these changes didn't do anything for the movie. The worse part is that they chose to build up a set of characters that just vanish during the climax of the film. It's half an hour of film that served no purpose but to let me watch boromir look scarred.
Back to the main story arc, and it's odd religious twist, which made next to no sense, and required the equivalent of a video game "cut scene" for it to attempt to have a plot. Again though there was some creepy as hell SFX and the final big bang had some crazy visuals.
In the end though your left with a film that hasn't told a story and leaves you with a ending that just doesn't close the movie.