Eerie setting, brutal and gruesome, lackluster delivery

Rating: 5/10 (21 April 2006)

I have been solemnly been awaiting the arrival of Silent Hill for quite sometime, and stupidly I had my expectations set to a certain level because I really wanted this movie to be a well made, scary film and I feel that it came up pretty short.
Be warned I may speak about certain scenes in the movie, but I won't write any spoilers although i'm convinced this movie kind of spoiled itself. To start I would like to say that this movie kind of gave me the "oOOoo..freaky cult" and "the gates of hell have been opened..." from amityville horror vibe. The cinematography was one of my biggest gripes about this movie. It was at some brief moments dis-orienting, and at other times just annoying, and even predictable and poorly framed. I am not completely sure as to whether or not predictability is a sign of poor camera work but I thought it was comical when I could guess to myself what the next shot would be, consistently. The camera was tilted a lot, with overhead panning shots, a lot of times the same camera movement/shot would be made scene after scene and I do not mean the part when the camera is spinning around Rose, that made sense even though I dis-like how it was edited. I am talking about just pointless movement that really added no effect and just distracted me from the even less vital moments in the movie. There was a scene where they framed Rose walking away from the camera through a torn up baby carriage, and I just felt that the camera work was trying, or perhaps there was just some lame symbolism with the broken carriage and her losing her child, so benefit of the doubt. Not all of the camera work was bad and sometimes it did involve me in the movie but it was nothing I would ever go wow, that was an amazing shot, as a for instance, in raging bull when robert de niro's character is fighting sugar ray for the final time, that was an un-believably good scene and beautifully shot with the lights and the way he looks, o it was magnificent. Visually, not camera work but special fx, the movie was attractive. The creeps and the ghoulies were pretty creepy and original; I enjoyed them and there amazing, not to mention graphic, ways of killing people. The music was good, when Rose stands up in front of the "cult" the accompanying music made me giggle, a manly giggle of course. Next big gripe about the movie, the dialogue and some of the acting. The dialogue pretty much sucked; people said stupid things, and asked stupid questions. Silent Hill is known for the terrible fires that occurred there, and this is a well-known fact to our characters and yet when they walk into a factory after already exploring and seeing some of the extensive fire damage to the city, they still find the need to say things such as "it looks like there was a fire here", or things along the lines of "something bad happened here". Then there was the cheesy lines between characters, and there were other times when I rolled my eyes at the dialogue but I don't feel its necessary to list anymore. The acting was good at parts, and unrealistic in others. I always have a thing about reasonable, possible reactions people might have in situations such as this one, and a lot of times its just neither of the two. A third thing was plot development and significance of characters. It all made a good story and the connections were there, but I felt like i was left wanting. More specifically near the end when the freaky little girl is revealing the "truth" to Rose, they never said anything about a woman convincing everyone in the town that there was an apocalypse. She was not very manipulative, although thats how I thought of her, because I figured she must'voe been. Rose I found to still make usual stupid horror movie decisions. The cop was a character I liked even though I thought the idea of making people thing she was beaten to death by lead pipes and then turning up to still be alive later in the movie, only to asphyxiate on smoke as she is being lowered to a fire and then her skin melts and she burns to death only minutes after we found out she was still alive. The daughter was pretty good, although at some points I was wondering whether she was mentally retarded with some of the dialogue. The movie was extremely gory, and i mean that as they pushed the bar on bloody with some scenes I won't spoil. The last thing is that the movie was not that scary, it was dramatic and had a creepy setting, and the potential to be an awesome scary movie but it just didn't deliver. Perhaps I should'voe looked more into the film before seeing it but I really wanted to be surprised with everything, and just see how it turned out. Overall, the movie wasn't the worst thing i have ever seen (i.e. Ultraviolet), and even though it had a lot of bad elements I still enjoyed it because I am a fan of the game and the gruesomeness and creativity behind it, along with good make up and creepy settings I don't feel like I wasted my money, and although I was disappointed with the lack of scary, I still enjoyed a night at the movies.
-Andrew