Silent (and way too long) HELL!

Rating: 1/10 (25 April 2006)

***Contains Spoilers*** Okay, I know I'll upset those little game-crazy fans out there who "love" this woefully BAD film. I had not played the game, nor did i know this was based on a game when I went to see it. It simply looked like a good horror flick and I wanted to see it. Boy, was i in for one of the WORST horror film-going experiences since...BOTH versions of the EXORCIST prequels ("THE BEGINNING" and "DOMINION") or last year's ALONE IN THE DARK (also shamelessly based on a video game, I understand). HORROR FANS--Be WARNED! While the film started off interestingly enough (especially once the lead actress got into the town), it soon started getting silly when these ash creatures start popping up and attacking her...and then are suddenly gone. HUH? I figured it would all be explained later on and I stuck it out. These creatures (and several others) were never really explained--they just WERE.
And, whoever the money people were who backed this...didn't they bother to READ the script? The town was abandoned over 30 years before...apparently just after the religious fanatics burned the one little girl (Alessa) as a witch. The girl doesn't die (or maybe she died later in the hospital???), but her anger and hate conjure up a demon (is this right??) that waits 20 + years to give birth to Alessa's daughter (!!!!???) and then leaves her at an orphanage for a couple to adopt. HUH!?! What kind of crap is that? The religious sect was interesting, especially since they were in whatever dimensional version of the town they were in. But when it was explained they were dead...and then Alessa's spirit (and her look-alike demon clone) comes and kills them (but they were already dead to begin with-burned to death in the fire they tried to kill Alessa with), the film just falls even flatter on its face than it already had! The non-ending has the heroine and her daughter returning home--but are somehow still trapped in another dimension (how they got there is not explained), leaving room for a (please God, NO!!!) sequel.
Video game players may get this, but as a film---it SHOULD stand on its own and NOT be propped up on the hope that its audience is familiar with the game it's based on. The ash creatures, acid-spitting blob people, brutally tortured guy in the bathroom and guy with a huge sword may mean something to game players, but to those uninitiated with the game (i.e. any fool unlucky enough to stumble into the theater expecting a coherent fright flick) only come away shaking our heads wondering what the heck those things were, why they were there and how they got there.
The film does have some things going for it. The transition between real world and other world is handled well. There is some truly horrific imagery in the film. The acting is fairly tolerable (especially Alice Krige). It had the ability to be something really unique, instead of just becoming an incoherent creature-fest. (When the lead meets the nurse mannequin things in the basement...I almost expected the creatures to break out into Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video! Ha!).
The film runs an agonizingly long 2 hours and 7 minutes...agonizing because it looses any coherence very early in the story and drags on and on. The person I saw it with was actually so bored, he fell asleep briefly (O' if only I'd been so lucky to have slept through this stillborn stinker, too). It's such a shame that such a great looking movie had nothing interesting, original, or intelligent to say.
This film was #1 at the box office last week, but it's take was only in the mid-$20 million range. Respectable, no doubt, but certainly NOT "blockbuster" by any means. I saw this Monday, and there were 25 or so people in the theater. Obviously word is getting out about this terror-turd. If it's NOT off the Top 10 list after next weekend, it surly will be by the following.
NOT even worth a DVD rental! My 2 hours and 7 minutes are forever lost in the otherworld purgatory known as SILENT HILL. SNORE!!!!!