There's reason to be excited if you're a fan of the games

Rating: 6/10 (21 April 2006)

Apart from being a film-buff, I've been a fan of the silent hill series of video games from its inception, and it must first be said that the film stays true to the style, feel, and tenor of the games. But if you're not an avid fan, or if you cringe at the sight of your favorite intellectual properties being even the slightest bit played with, then you may not like this movie. The dialogue, as in the games, is all but canned, but unlike the games, the themes here have been simplified and lain out for the viewer, removing one of the deepest draws of the series. It's not enough to say that movie producers expect more from a 2 hour long movie in terms of quick and succinct plot development than a game publisher expects from a game, in fact many of the themes from the game were butchered by this simplification. In the games Silent hill 1 and 3, a story plays out which is paralleled by the movie in which a little girl and her father (mother in the film) are draw into silent hill by a woman seeking to resurrect a demon-god, in silent hill 2 and 4 a deeper theme of the town as an outer limbo, a place for wanderers with sordid pasts. These themes are mashed together in the film, and hardly come out intact. I would rather suggest this film for gore-fans simply for the extreme depictions of the aftermath of violence and deformed monsters that the main character rose faces, than say to a fan of classic horror, or a fan of the intensity of survival video games that they should see it. It's no masterpiece of game-to-film, but it's not the worst movie this year by far.