Silent Hill - A Disturbing Film

Rating: 8/10 (1 May 2006)

1st off this movie is not everybody's cup of tea. It is genuinely creepy in a nightmarish way. The scenes are fairly powerful and tolerating them will require an inured psyche or a jaded one. Indeed one wonders about the many reviewers who said the film was not scary.
I did read a few reviews before seeing the film. I can say I was drawn to the film having been exposed to the computer game (Silent Hill 4 for PC). I never did finish the game, principally from not wanting to spend the long hours associated with playing video games in such a ghastly environment. If 'you are what you eat' well then
But the film seemed like it could be an interesting diversion, particularly if the producer had managed it well. And my first impression was positive. After checking IMDb, indications were that the film had received a high number of favorable responses. I don't recall the exact number but it was in the high sevens on a scale of 10. At that point it seemed there was reason to go. Imagine my surprise a few days later when, after discussing my intentions to see the film with a friend, I am directed to the Rotten Tomatoes site where the film is slated (ranking 2.5 out of 10). A closer look showed that this was the 'critics' rating, the 'users' rating was in the 7's. Well, not being a fan of professional critics, I set out to read some reviews (on IMDb of course).
Since the 'Hated it' reviews generally provide the most amount of insight (when they provide any), they were first. The gist of them seemed to be that the acting was poor. Bad dialogue was a close second. There were a lot people very upset that the dialogue did not measure up. This was rather mystifying since dialogue in horror films almost always sucks when it's not outright comedic. Some folks were angered by the ending of the movie and this is a complaint for which I usually have a lot of sympathy. There were also a lot of rather snide remarks about the film not being scary or 'little girls not being scary anymore'. Besides being unhelpful, the way they were phrased made one curious about the writers.
Checking the positive reviews they almost uniformly praised the quality of the adaptation and the cinematography. There were also comments about the poor quality of dialogue and plot flow. After seeing the film I can say that I agree with most of them. By the time I had finished checking reviews, I had learned the nature of the ending by catching a spoiler or two. Surprisingly, it did not ruin the film for me, I still wanted to see how it came out. It did remove the ending as a potential issue. Watching movies (like politics) is a game of expectations. If the audience's expectations are too high, even a decent film is bound to disappoint.
The Film's Impact:
The core issue is that whatever elements and effects the director, Mr Gans, did take from the game are adapted and implemented almost flawlessly  creating a genuinely scary and disturbing experience over much of the first 1/2 to 2/3s of the movie. It is true that during the last portion of the film it hitches and sputters a bit as a back story and some rather crude caricatures of villains are hatched to fill out the plot. The storyline created to fill the world of Silent Hill doesn't really mesh well and I sympathize with some reviewers' disappointments. However, if clumsy, the plot line serves and so is not a fatal flaw. The same comment applies to both the acting and the dialogue.
The director does not use all of the creepy elements of the game. In a way I was relieved that he did not add (for example) the ceiling crawlers to the movie version. The movie was scary enough and, though it would have added much to the surreal nature of the movie, it would have also taken away from the aspect of the female lead as he chose to have that actor play it (ie. limited combat ).
Lastly, some advice, don't see this movie if you can't stomach the fright. Some of the scenes (walls weeping blood, mal shaped human forms) are quite intense. You just might not want these images inside your head. I do accept that some of the reviewers may have found the film not scary - simply because of the variability of human experience. What scares one may not affect or even amuse another, etc. But then, this film was not amusing.
The director did shortcut the exploration of Silent Hill, the clues, etc. The eerie radio cueing is only used in one scene with a cell phone substitute. But the issue is not what was left out but how the director succeeded with the elements and sets he did use. This is a horror film that is different from the rest, at least until the final portions of the film where it is wrenched into sort of a standard plot. Even then it keeps its differences. Silent Hill may fade at the box office but it won't be forgotten.