If this is "the best horror flick in years", God help the horror flick industry

Rating: 5/10 (26 April 2006)

I'm a huge fan of Christophe Gans' "Brotherhood Of The Wolf", one of the most fun and inventive horror flicks of the last 10 years.
However, with "Silent Hill", Gans turns right around and throws himself back to the level of tedium he demonstrated with "Crying Freeman". I've been anticipating "Silent Hill" with much excitement since I heard about it, and after the fevered reviews here, was expecting something at least on the visceral level of the first "Poltergeist".
How wrong I was.
Much of the blame for this movie has to be levelled at Roger Avery. The motivations for the characters in this movie are sub-par laughable, the characterisations non-existent, and the dialogue completely forgettable. There's simply NO story. For reasons unknown to ANYONE with a brain, the lead character takes her disturbed daughter to a town she references while sleep-walking (oh: and someone buys a house WITH a child, next to a virtual Niagra Falls drop-off!?! Gimme a break!) From then on, this is the whole plot: the woman flees a police offer for virtually no discernible reason. Ends up in a spooky foggy town (was anyone else thinking of the "Maple Street" original Twilight Zone episode?) Cop briefly arrests woman. (Horribly underwritten scene) Characters lurch from one set of fairly lame (though visually arresting) monster-apparitions after another after each "Pit Siren" warning. A bunch of religious nuts are introduced (in a scene rendered in inexplicable pseudo-8mm film flashback, that went on far too long.) And the movie ends in limbo.
I took my girlfriend to see this, a film industry professional who gets scared at totally harmless drivel like "The Grudge", "Ring", etc. After reading the reviews here, I was actually concerned as we were driving to the move theatre, as I was worried this would traumatise her for days. Her bored reaction as she turned to me during the end credits said it all: "That Was S**t".
I was bored, bored, bored, bored by this film. I've got scarier things at the back of my refrigerator.
Kudos to the set designer. Kudos to the FX guys.
Pyramid Head (is this the same character described as "Red Pyramid" in the end credits?) is a wonderful, wonderful creation. Sadly, he makes absolutely no sense in the movie, and was woefully underused. (I was expecting at least one more appearance by him towards the end, and felt severely gypped when he didn't show.) If McFarlane don't make an action figure of him soon, they're missing a trick.
If people here think this movie's scary, they need to stop watching their tapes of Animaniacs and try something challenging. Rent "Alien", "The Haunting" (original version), "The Changeling", "Halloween", "The Thing"...just anything that actually makes you jump.
This movie was a waste of my money, and my time. I'm beginning to wonder if Gans is a one-hit wonder.