excellent beginning, but serious problems

Rating: 5/10 (22 April 2006)

First the good: The atmosphere of this movie completely captured Silent Hill. The locations are easily recognizable to anyone who has played the game. The monsters in this movie are pretty terrifying, although oddly, not as much as they were in the game. The sound effects and music in this movie were superb, and overall, Silent Hill was effectively portrayed on the big screen. Now, for the bad: the major problem in this movie, for me, is that they changed the mythology of Silent Hill by making the cult into a fanatical Christian cult who likes to purify by fire. In the game, the cult was a wacked out pseudo-satanic cult who tries to bring their demi-god/demon to life by engaging in a horrific form of child abuse. This was the biggest issue for me when I watched this movie, because it drastically changed the plot. The second major problem for me was that the monsters were not on screen enough. We see the black-shadow babies - who freaked me out - but we only see them in one scene. We should have had more scares like that. Finally, at 127 minutes, the movie was just too long for what it was.