Video Game to Movie Translation Fails Again

Rating: 3/10 (16 May 2006)

The popular video game horror series "Silent Hill" by Konami has a serious cult following, and of course, with something like that, you're going to have purists who are going to pick apart this movie piece by piece. But judging the film as a stand alone work of art, Silent Hill failed miserably in so many places.
The first five minutes of the movie, I knew this was going to be bad. The acting was terrible right off the bat, enough to make me cringe at how poor their execution was. As you are submerged deeper into the movie, it feels more and more like a film you would see on a lazy Saturday afternoon on the Sci-fi channel. Pardon the visuals, which are the only positive about this film. In fact, the visuals are excellent, and reflect the video game extremely well. However, unlike the video game, the movie failed to create a tense atmosphere that would provoke fear or anxiety, probably because the movie basically tells you when its about to try and scare you. The cinematography is traditional, and the movie relies too much on the cliché "jump out and scare you" technique. The soundtrack, which used ambient beats and sounds straight from the game, was well done, until the effects were used over and over again. The plot is very abstract, which one might expect, but since I was too busy laughing at the poor acting and the attempts to get my heart racing, I couldn't appreciate it much. I also didn't like how the ending hints at a sequel, because it takes everything it just told you in the film and throws it in the garbage, and consequently, it felt like a waste of two hours. Thank God for student discounts.
Pass up on Silent Hill and wait for another horror movie, like The Omen. Or go out and buy the video games.