Another violent vid game movie with Lovecraftian imagery that ends up crap.

Rating: Null/10 (11 December 2006)

Not having seen the VG, I was completely ignorant of the story or plot of this horror entry. Now that I have seen it, I am no longer ignorant of the plot, and I realize that the plot is what is ignorant, what little there is of it. This starts out promising enough, very similar to a 1970s European horror film, with a somewhat haunted little child. Not an unusual theme for that earlier time. It's far-fetched that the mother would get the bug to visit Silent Hill on what's pretty much a whim, but the film must progress, and that's not unheard of in horror films. The imagery we see once we get fully engulfed in the town's depths is quite startling and nightmarish. But then the whole story of the good people who are really bad because they are intolerant religious fanatics, and the bad "demon" who is really good because she was wronged by these fanatics is really the turning point, turning what could have been something quite eerie into yet another unsubtle revenge melodrama with violent imagery. This then becomes yet another one in the long, long list of VG based horror films, and really most modern horror films, that are long on style and very, very short on having an engaging story. It's getting tiring to see the constant juxtaposition of religious fanatics as the really bad people, do any of these filmmakers really think nobody gets their less than subtle commentary for what it really is, a slander on religion and the faithful in general? With people getting thrills out of violent tripe like this (and rating it a 10 no less), there is no wonder that many think of this society as decedent and immoral.