A good horror movie with lamentable script failures.

Rating: 6/10 (5 February 2017)

This movie is inspired by a popular video game, which immediately sounds alarms in my head. But I took a chance and I was surprised by the positive. It's not the best horror movie I've seen, but for anyone who does not know the original game, it's intense. The action takes place in Silent Hill, a ruined village that was abandoned in a hurry after a serious environmental incident, and is now haunted by powerful and cruel supernatural entities linked to the village's past. Here, a young mother searches for her missing daughter, knowing only that she went there. The story begins brilliantly and gets better and better as we watch the succession of scary events at that location. It is as if there is a dark and scary alter-ego of the village that only appears at night. The creatures that are coming up are truly the product of nightmares. By day, it's all quiet but wrapped in permanent, stubborn haze. More frightening, impossible. Of course, the film is packed with stately and well-crafted CGI, just like the sound effects. The script, however, lacks solidity and there are several plot holes that the film simply ignores, leaving unexplained to try to tell a totally ridiculous story involving witches. At a certain point, the whole story of the film can only endure if we ignore the incongruities and focus exclusively on what we are seeing. Radha Mitchell gives life to the main character, the mother who seeks her daughter, but does so in such a forced and implausible way that we can only conclude that it was a mistake to put her in that character. Jodelle Ferland gave life to Sharon and her alter-ego Alessa, the great villain. For such a young actress is undoubtedly a test of versatility, but let's face it, they were not very difficult characters. Sean Bean also appears in the film, but his character is so absurdly misused that the actor ends up almost like figuration.