bunch of clichés

Rating: 4/10 (28 October 2010)

first of all, i know little of the game series. in addition, I'm no fan of the horror genre and accordingly don't know a lot about it. that said, almost everything I do know about the genre was neatly summed up in Silent Hill. in a nonsensical fashion. the following is a very spoilerful recapitulation:
a woman feels obliged to visit a 'tainted town' because of the nightmares of her adopted haunted daughter. seemingly unfamiliar with books, internet or the entire concept of research, Rose will even ignore a police officer's order to stop the car to oblige her Pavlovian reaction to the mere name of this town on a direction sign. 'Silent Hill', that is. and silent it is. at least during the day. at night zombies (or another type of deformed humanoid, which is basically the same in this case) roam the place. before the female protagonist finds that out, she will crash the car in an effort to not crash into a little girl, who walks the streets at night (bare feet, in a night gown, as them little rascals do). when Rose wakes up, she finds Sharon is gone missing, and, dismissing the comfort and practicality of her car, starts walking through the inevitable fog to the abandoned town of Silent Hill. there Rose and the viewer will discover the truth behind Sharon's nightmares, which is unnecessarily complicated and involves witches, 'the demon', 'the sign', evil in general, lots of gore, less suspension, and above all a lot of stupidity. i wonder how many mothers out there would keep searching for their daughter after they travelled to an abandoned town where ash rain clouds their vision and where the first signs of life, apart from their daughter running away from them, are a bunch of burned children trying to grab their limbs while crying like very small pigs and an extremely disfigured body on a fence looking right at them. at a certain point, you just know something is wrong. right?
i believe plausibility is the first thing to achieve in order to make good horror. the uncanny, empathy with at least some of the characters, &c. few film makers in this genre seem to realize this (or maybe i tend to watch the wrong horror films).
of course, all cannot be bad. the ash rain (thank God Rose is such a good observer and mutters about what she sees and does the audience a service in the process) and was quite nice (though i don't know if this is an original addition or not), as were the burned children because they had (the potency to have) something very sad about them. also, the way the skin of the environment peeled off to form Kafkaesque cockroaches was pretty neat. another detail that caught my attention was the interesting design of the demon's helmet, reminding me of the design of the video game MDK's protagonist Kurt. in this film, however, it felt out of place. over all, the color correction and post-production were clean and effective. at times the sound effects were really adding suspension, though the music was too dramatic and cliché to my taste. the ending was intriguing. not very original, but subtle enough and well-executed.
on a side note: the biggest thrill i got from the entire film was when i mistook Rose's leg for a weird creature lurking behind her. i think this might illustrate the ineffectiveness of cinematic logic in and a trite basis of this film: somehow the viewer might know what's coming at any time. food for thought.