Visually striking badly written

Rating: 5/10 (29 April 2006)

The first sign of a bad script is either a long description at the beginning or towards to end to explain the story. Personally I could have lived without the long winded explanation near the end of Silent Hill. If the writer can't work it into the story he shouldn't resort a monologue to catch the viewer up. The first half was impressive but then it fell apart. Most of the best visuals and scenes were in the first half hour to forty five minutes. Another reviewer said it was unlike Doom and I'd like to correct that, it had parts that were more like the Doom 3 video game than the movie Doom was. Really showed it could be done well. I don't want to go into any real spoilers but there are several scenes that stand out and show what it could have been and the style of the film is quite beautiful. Storywise it's a bit of Jacob's Ladder meets The Ring. Even a little Poltergeist II thrown in. There's a lot of name dropping so obviously the Director is a fan. There's a school they keep repeating the name, it's called Midwich as in Village Of The Damned. I wanted to like it but there's a side of me that wished I'd walked out halfway through it, it would have left a better impression. Kind of like King Kong in that I want the DVD so I can fast forward to the good parts. Some parts are really disturbing and it's worth seeing but the script really needed a rewrite in the worst way.