Overkill!

Rating: 3/10 (11 May 2007)

Watching horror films these days is a very frustrating thing: the majority of horror films fall into two categories: PG-13 horror, which can only be described as anemic and lifeless, with almost no originality to them. Then there are a few R-rated horror films made these days, which, unfortunately, are also anemic and unoriginal but contain more gore and violence, often uninspired gore or violence. To make matters worse, most of these horror films, whether they're PG-13 or rated R, are remakes or sequels of those remakes. Originality is a thing of the past in the horror genre. So when something quasi-original comes along, such as SILENT HILL, I'm almost shocked. I have to pinch myself in disbelief. An actual original horror film made in 2006? No way! But (and there's always a but here...), as original a film SILENT HILL is in comparison to most of the unoriginal crap being made these days, it's sad when the whole damn thing just doesn't work or it's not successful at all. In fact I believe that the director, writer, whomever, went overboard with their attempt to bring this video game to the big screen. SILENT HILL was trying way too hard to set itself apart from other horror films. This unfortunate attempt will only drive audiences towards more safe, middle-of-the-road stuff churned out by Hollywood.
As unique as it is, the film is not 100% original. It obviously borrows elements from other films or books but it's the treatment of these horror ideas that sends it into the "are you kidding me?" category. To complicate things, the script doesn't make any sense at all. Not on any level and yet we see a startling amount of horror imagery and violence just for the sake of showing horror imagery and violence, which usually doesn't bother me, but in this case because the screenplay made so little sense that a detachment was created between the story and the video game horror visuals. SILENT HILL ends up being just a collection of hallucinatory imagery and ideas stitched together by a weak and obvious plot line. The disconnect was startling. I watched the film avidly and yet with a distance. I cannot say if it's good or bad because honestly, I can't even start to ponder what they were trying to achieve here. It's not frightening or stomach turning and yet the excessive amount of attention and details spent of the visuals was unpleasant: so much imagery with so little meaning to them.
The biggest problem with SILENT HILL though was the mother's motivation. Like so many other films made these days, such as DARK WATER or THE FORGOTTEN, we see a mother who, in this case, acts in a totally illogical manner. Her adopted daughter is having nightmares of a city called Silent Hill and decides to bring her daughter to that town for...what? Answers? Anyway, the reckless mother ends up in Silent Hill, which exists on a different dimension or plane of existence. This is when the daughter disappears and from then on, we see the mother trying to find her daughter in this deserted Twilight Zone city. The mother goes through one horrific encounter after another, most of them unexplained, and yet she still searches for her daughter. The mother literally goes through hell to regain her daughter, almost totally oblivious to the bizarre world she's in. The only thing she cares about is "Where's my daughter?" So for the next hour, we hear the mother scream "Sharon!" while a thing with a Pyramid head and a huge knife tries to kill her (and that lesbian cop). Insects eat the surroundings, like LANGOLIERS. The mother meets this evil religious sect. With everything going on, I completely lost track of the story. Eventually we know the adopted daughter's mysterious past (flashback made to look like it was shot with a super 8mm camera...why?) and then the climax comes along and I was like "What?". A bed with a burnt little girl lying on it, the bed surrounded by "living" barbed wire and the bed appears from a hole in the floor of the church where the burnt girl starts killing everyone, a la Carrie, stabbing people with the barbed wire, including the head of the sect, who is ripped apart from the living barbed wire that stabbed her through the vagina? Got that? This is just horror overkill. By that time, with the orgy of images and ideas, there was just no point of reference anymore and things occurred just because the director or writer wanted them to occur. I seriously wondered what was the point of all of this. I'm glad computers have made it possible for filmmakers to show imagery which are as far reaching as the human imagination but then if such imagery is devoid of meaning, what are we left with?
The entire film felt like it was imagined by the fevered mind of a 9 year old trying to cram as many ideas as possible into one weak story.
Is SILENT HILL original? For the most part, it is. Unfortunately, it just didn't know what to do with its originality and what it ended up with was a wonky film with no logic or point to it at all and it's basically a catalog of horror visuals signifying nothing. A pity, really, considering the glut of remakes and sequels made these days.