Visually competent... but unfortunately....

Rating: 4/10 (21 September 2013)

Silent Hill is one of those series that I could never get into. Silent Hill 2 was good, but the only other Silent Hill game I have played is Downpour and that one was abysmal. I know a lot of people are going to say that I should play the games first, but I'm going to dismiss that because it really shouldn't matter. A mother and daughter flee to a strange abandoned town to seek out answers to the daughter's nightly psychological turmoil in Brotherhood of the Wolf director Christophe Gans' adaptation of the popular survival horror video game. Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) is a very sick child, yet rather than seeing her child suffer the cruel indignities of the medical profession, Rose (Radha Mitchell) ignores her husband's (Sean Bean) pleas and absconds with her ailing daughter to the fog-enshrouded town of Silent Hill. A town drenched in darkness and inhabited by a strange collection of menacing specters, Silent Hill seemingly swallows young Sharon whole upon arrival. Determined to get her daughter back at any cost, Rose sets out to explore the mysterious Silent Hill, only to discover an evil so powerful that it possesses the ability to transform anything it wishes. With the deeply disturbing history of the town slowly coming into focus through the dense fog, Rose soon realizes that both she and her daughter may be little more than simple pawns in a much larger, and seemingly supernatural, game. (Jason Buchanan, Rovi) Let us talk about the things the movie gets right: The music. They got the composer from the games, Akira Yamaoka, back to do the music. It is a great, creepy soundtrack, as expected. And they nailed the LOOK and FEEL of Silent Hill, it is a gorgeous looking film. The monsters look really good and the best monster of all makes an appearance: Pyramid Head. However, everything else about the film falls apart. The script is a cobbled mess, with no clear idea of where it is going and why. They leave things under-explained, or explained to the point where it doesn't make any sense. (For example: What was up with that ending). Also, there aren't really any scares, which is irritating to me. Also, the acting is pretty mediocre. The little girl does good, but everyone else it feels like is just phoning it in. And the film's pacing is all over the place: at times it goes too fast and you are like "Wait what? Why did that happen?" and other times it is so slow you're like "Can we please move along?". I know some fans are going to tear me apart for this, but I'm sorry: Both this and Silent Hill Revelation are terrible movies, video game adaptations or not. But on the other hand: This is a masterpiece when compared to the piece of crap sequel that came out just last year, IN 3D!!!!