Finally, a real horror movie!

Rating: 8/10 (1 May 2006)

SILENT HILL is one of the best horror movies of the past twenty years. Unlike many other recent "horror" movies, which are more fantasy, action or thrillers with some blood and guts, SILENT HILL is a full-blooded exercise in nightmarish and surrealistic horror. It is the movie that HELLRAISER was trying to be.
A mother and father are trying to deal with their adopted daughters dangerous sleepwalking affliction. The girl repeatedly shouts the name of the town from which she came ("Silent Hill"), and the mother believes that taking her to Silent Hill may be the catharsis she needs to snap out of her dementia.
The two of them drive to Silent Hill, against the father's wishes, and crash the car when they try and avoid a mysterious figure crossing the road. The mother wakes up hours later and sees that her daughter is missing... and Silent Hill has become some sort of nightmare alternate dimension plagued by monsters, mutants and creepy street people.
The movie captures the look and atmosphere of the video game without ever coming off like a filmed session of game play. Other game adaptations have fallen into the trap of seeming like little more than watching someone else play the game, which is not particularly interesting or entertaining. SILENT HILL has intelligent dialog, intriguing characters and a fully developed plot to add muscle to its astonishing visuals. It's not just one gory, bizarre set-piece after another; it's a surreal visual feast held together by a compelling story and strong performances.
The screenplay is the movie's only real liability, as screenwriter Roger Avery tries to incorporate the video game's stilted, melodramatic dialog into the action. It works in short spurts in the game, but simply doesn't translate to the cinema.
SILENT HILL ignores both the unfortunate move toward "extreme" horror and the tendency of horror movies to pull punches for fear of offending the audience. Political correctness and a need to repulse the audience with gruesome but pointless imagery isn't to be found in SILENT HILL. This is true horror, pure and uncompromising. Horror is like rock & roll: it's about breaking boundaries and not worrying what's going to sell in middle America. If they had given Lucio Fulci $50 Million, he might have made a movie like this. I highly recommend this movie for hard-core horror fans.
More casual audiences and younger kids may not be ready for it.