Believe it or not, Silent Hill is a very good movie!

Rating: 8/10 (10 October 2009)

I love Silent Hill. While "Homecoming" and "0rigins" aren't that good, I will always love the foggy town and its uncanny ability to latch onto peoples heads and screw their minds 'till their brains come out their ears. Seeing as how most video game adaptations bastardize their respective franchises, or simply shouldn't be adapted at all (Seriously? Was anyone expecting "Super Mario Bros." to be a good movie? It's a game about two plumbers jumping on monsters. Just leave it on a game pack.) because the source material just doesn't make sense for a movie. Yet the Silent Hill series and its twisted, dark, plots which were very cinematic in and of themselves, had potential and while the film doesn't use up all that potential, it squeezes some very satisfying droplets of horror and style.
The first thing to praise is the films look. Everything looks perfect, Silent Hill itself looks incredible. Everything from the swirling fog to the eerie, lonely atmosphere is perfect. Even when the film changes to the Otherworld, it looks great. All the monsters are designed well too, the gray children are disturbing and even Pyramid head, despite being here out of fan service, looks great and his updated look is very well done. This is what a Silent Hill film should look like.
The acting, while occasionally cheesy (But then again, look at the acting in the games...) is decent and the story is well told, save for a confusing ending. The film doesn't rely as heavily on psychological horror, but there are still scraps of psychological horror to feed on and a bevy of disturbing scenes worthy of the series. Akira Yamaoka's beautiful yet creepy melodies make the jump to the film, so it sounds great and as always it helps the atmosphere and tone.
The film isn't perfect, there is some fan servicing, and I'm not too fond of the fact that they explained the Siren you hear when the worlds change shape. The siren is much creepier and mysterious left unexplained. The film also has some strange pacing, sometimes its moving along fine other times it'll slow down and while you might expect exposition or mood building during these scenes, the scenes where the film loses steam or slows down the most are usually just so someone can do something completely irrelevant. There are also a few stupid scenes. I wanted to smack Cybil for her brilliant comment: "They used to say this place was haunted. I think they were right." Is that supposed to be funny? Cause I'm pretty sure it was just stupid. Also the scene where the demon says "Look Mommy, I'm burning!" was just downright silly. I also feel that Sean Bean's character is unnecessary, he usually just farts about, chewing scenery and occasionally tripping over some exposition that could've easily been made by another character or found by the main protagonist, Rose. Bean is a great actor, but he has no purpose here and his scenes could've been let on the cutting room floor. The writer should've let all the exposition flow with the main characters, it also baffles because whenever he shows up the atmosphere and tension is instantly burst. Silent Hill is supposed to be a desolate, lonely place. To retain atmosphere, the movie should never leave the town once the characters entered.
Despite that, Silent Hill is a genuinely creepy and well written, well made movie. If the writer can clean up the few problems the film had, I feel that the film sequel can be as monumental as the games sequel. Let us hope and pray Silent Hill 2 stays true to its source material, and provides a great dramatic horror show. For now, Silent Hill is still a very good movie, and a step in the right direction for video game adaptations.