A real mixed bag: great set design and atmospherics, but a bad script

Rating: 5/10 (21 December 2016)

Video game adaptations never really work well when transferred to film, with the RESIDENT EVIL films being distinctly average. Happily, SILENT HILL has a great director in Christophe Gans – who wowed us with his excellent BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF back in 2001. Gans brings his trademark atmosphere and suspense to a movie which marks a milestone in terms of set design – there's never been a creepier ghost town than the one seen here, complete with ash raining down and nasty beasties lurking underneath the streets. Sadly, the power of Gans' directing is countered by an appalling script from Roger Avary (whose directorial debut, KILLING ZOE, wasn't much cop either, come to think of it). Cheesy dialogue and endless exposition combine to ultimately ruin this movie effectiveness and make things pretty dreary as the story progresses.
Another major issue the film has is the heroine: she's totally unlikable and unsympathetic, right from the moment we see her fleeing from a good-natured cop, putting her kid in danger by speeding, and then crashing her car into the bargain. It doesn't help that the actress playing her is Radha Mitchell, whom I've never liked much; she convinces us that she's powerful and resourceful, and terrified in places, but she never engages for one moment with the audience. Sean Bean is also lurking about, playing Mitchell's husband, and he's fantastic, except he doesn't actually interact with any other cast members, and his scenes don't gel with the rest of the story at all.
The first half of the movie is genuinely creepy, excellent in fact. The brooding atmosphere is powerfully built and punctuated by some fine scare sequences which manage to be both terrifying and disturbing – I'm thinking of the burning babies and the weird mutant think that spits acid from a festering chest wound. Also on hand is a brilliant movie villain, called Pyramid Head, who wields an absolutely massive machete and who features in two of the film's best shock sequences. Unfortunately, the film's second half, which attempts to explain the garbled back story, is much less impressive. Things slow down to snail-like speed as we get endless "flashback" sequences which are uniformly dull, and you'll cry in frustration as Gans fades out once more, bringing things to a halt with a black (or white) screen.
The introduction of a bunch of fanatical Christians, who turn out to be the bad guys, is a mistake, and detracts from the demonic horror so carefully portrayed in the film's earlier scenes; we're back to the clichéd "burn the witch" mob mentality here, seen on films a million times before, and it's just boring. Things liven up for a last-reel massacre, in which Alice Krige, playing a typically creepy villain here - she's a great actress - has an unpleasant run in with some sentient barbed wire, and various others are burned alive, have their skin stripped off, or are just torn to pieces. Special effects are excellent, by the way, but it takes more than that to make a movie.
In the end, the film suffers from the lack of likable people. Sean Bean is fine, but he's nothing to do with the film, really, and he feels like a tacked-on afterthought. Laurie Holden, whose heroic cop plays second-fiddle to Mitchell's tough mum, is boring and weirdly masculine, reminding me of Brigitte Nielsen. The only 'nice' character is Deborah Kara Unger, hidden under a load of old-age makeup, who plays the town's misunderstood psycho, and even she's not that nice. The only other surprise in the cast is an excellent Kim Coates, who has gone from B-movie fare (I'm thinking DIE HARD rip-off LETHAL TENDER) to Hollywood blockbusters.