A visually interesting film, with horrendous narratives

Rating: 3/10 (24 August 2006)

Silent Hill is an interesting concept and with good reasons. It looks amazing, it feels eerie and it definitely gets the discussion going. I was quite pleased to hear they were making a movie based on the video game, and especially pleased to hear that the director behind "Brotherhood of the Wolf" was attached. After looking up the writer, and seeing that he had dipped a bit of his talents into writing "Pulp Fiction", I was in heaven.
The final results though aren't as pleasing. The film turns out to be visually impressive and stunning, all the while being irritating to listen to. My eyes were happy, not my ears. The main problem is the narrative, how the story flows and how the events unfold. Rose simply runs around for half of the movie making some very odd decisions. First blindly following her daughter around, then stupidly following bus routes while handcuffed, to somehow believing that in the mouth of a corpse might lie a clue to her daughter's whereabouts (the logic in this puzzles me), ending in a church. The scariest part of Silent Hill is the fact that the whole movie is explained within a 4-5 minute stock-looking film which is played...in the mind of Rose?...In the air?...somewhere? I'm not sure, but it's played and it explains a few things.
Silent Hill is worth checking out, no doubt about it, but it isn't a great addition to the video-game adaptation resume. If critics feel that the main issue with vg adaptations are the lack of story and character, this just might be a huge caliber in their guns for the future. Albeit the narratives, this movie looks amazing!