Artistically Startling

Rating: 9/10 (26 April 2006)

This horror film does a good job of providing artistic special effects along with a horrific plot. For example, closeups of a cigarette lighter flashing in the darkness provide an economical method to startle the senses. Darkness and light are used to provide artistic contrast. And, religious motifs provide another layer of forbidding mystery. Natural disasters such as Katrina and man made disasters like Chernobyl are capable of causing whole towns and even cities to become uninhabitable for an extended period. Just such a town is Silent Hill, West Virginia, wiped out by underground fires and now full of mold and decay. Even the road to the town is blocked off by a strong metal fence. So, an adopted child from Silent Hill begins to experience visions of a former life in Silent Hill. Her mother wants to put to rest this psychosis by driving her daughter to the destroyed town and by presenting realism to combat the fantasy. Thus, begins the horror. This is an extraordinary film, superior to others of its genre. The complexity of the plot is only cleared at the end during an incredibly bloody and climactic sequence, unlike any other horror sequence in its startling violence.