Most overrated film of 2006

Rating: 3/10 (9 December 2006)

Okay um, do you have to be a member of a secret video game-cult to comprehend the "brilliance" of this film adaptation, or something? I sure as hell don't understand all the positive reactions and praising reviews on this movie, so maybe that's because a) I'm a stupid imbecile who missed the whole point or b) I never played the game or even heard of it before rumors got out that a movie was being produced based on it. I watched a very boring, pretentious, overlong, unnecessarily confusing and truly mundane ghost-story that, despite of the nifty direction job by Christophe Gans, felt like an utter waste of time. Granted, most of the locations and set pieces are genuinely sinister-looking and the grand finale, albeit realized with awful CGI-effects, is quite spectacular, but the story is just an incoherent bunch of nonsense that even the trashiest b-movie producers of the 1970's wouldn't dare turning into a movie! In order to unravel the strange behavior patterns of her adopted daughter Sharon, dedicated mum Rose Da Silva travels to the little girl's birth region to investigate what traumatizing events went on there. After dealing with the clichéd obstacles (like weird townsfolk advising her not to go etc...), Rose discovers the ominous village of Silent Hill, where ashes constantly snow down from the sky and computer generated beetles attack for no reason other than hospitality. Sharon vanishes after a banal car crash, but Rose teams up with female copper Cybil Bennett to conquer the horrors of Silent Hill. After this, I kind of lost all interest in Roger Avery's script, but it naturally has to do with diabolical cults, witch-covens and ancients curses. Can we say 'déjà-vu'? Everything in this film is incredibly mediocre, from Sean Bean's tiresome performance as the girl's father to the overly complex plot-twists that are clearly just there for padding reasons. Many people  myself included  complained about recent video game based horror films like "House of the Dead" or "Alone in the Dark" for being far too hectic and ridiculously over-the-top in the gore department, but "Silent Hill" is the complete opposite (dull and really lame) and that's definitely not good, either. Skipping this film would be my advise, but what the hell do I know about good video games?