Stuck between a hill and a hard place.

Rating: Null/10 (10 December 2014)

There aren't many horror films I can think of in which the hero or heroine is stuck between two sides battling each other, both of which are equally nasty. Essentially, this is the premise: a fundamentalist Christian sect lead by a deranged woman (suitably cast with Krige) used human sacrifice to fight Satan (or at least a demon), but they played with fire rather clumsily – literally – which lead to a minor incident in which most of the population got destroyed and sent to some sort of a Hell. (It's too depressing-looking and contains far too many ugly bite-happy insects to be Purgatory.) The girl they burned (?) became the demon's BFF, but because there was still a speck of goodness left in her, a child, Sharon, was "created" (don't ask me how); that same girl that had been adopted by Sean Bean and that actress who looks exactly like Roman Polansky's wife, the French actress Emmanuelle Seigner. The two look so much alike that for a long time I didn't realize I was watching two different women in movies! Emmanuele played Satan (or a demon?) in "The Ninth Gate", and so we come full circle. (Well, it's a sort of circle; perhaps a pentagram.) We come full pentagram. Polansky privately also likes little girls, so we have at least two circles or pentagrams here to come full to.
Anyhoo Sharon's conception is a mystery (perhaps uncovered in the sequel which I still haven't seen). Is Sharon a clone of the sacrificed girl? To make matters even more puzzling, Alessa herself also didn't have a father, so was Alessa in fact fathered by Satan (i.e. that demon)? I don't play computer games much, so if any of you computer dweebs have the answer – given as how SH is based on a computer game – let me know.
I gotta say I am more than impressed with the results. Re-visiting this movie many years later only increases its quality. I went into this expecting crap precisely because it's based on a computer game – coz that sort of information that doesn't exactly fill me with hope. Quite contrary to my expectations, SH is a visually dazzling trip that shows the viewer a virtual maze of a small-town Hell (is it?); the outdoor scenes are beautiful, the indoor scenes are somber, dark and fascinating. The photography, the beasts, the sets, and the special-effects alone guarantee the movie being well above average. An interesting story helps as well. The director is a Frenchman which explains the film's high visual quality.
Another positive aspect of the movie is that it wastes no time plot-wise, unlike so many horror flicks that take ages to get started. Things get going right from the outset rather than waste our time with small-talk and other introductory nonsense.
The finale is rather well done, though obviously lifted from the "Hellraiser" series, and slightly reminiscent also of the finale in "Dark City". But, hey: who watches horror movies expecting total originality? The downer ending isn't bad either; perhaps the main reason why the site's rating isn't much higher as it should be.
Drawbacks are few, small and far between. For example, the mediocre dialogue in the church just before the mass-slaying. I thought it was a little on the cheesy side. Kim Coates' cop-portrayal was also a tad silly, but we shouldn't be surprised by such sub-par acting from the guy who brought us that silly "ungh-ungh-ungh" semi-caveman character from "Battlefield Earth".