Dear Christophe Gans, Hollywood has nothing for you

Rating: 3/10 (21 April 2006)

Gans is a very talented filmmaker, BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF was a spectacular film, and if there is one thing that SILENT HILL proves, its that Christophe Gans can work wonders on even the most shoddy material. And this is shoddy material. Its a miracle that Gans' visual imagination is able to bring so much imagination to the look (and sound) of the spooky town and its denizens, when the plot involves a woman running from one location to another for unspecified reasons, being menaced by unspecified things for unspecified reasons, for the entire over-extended running time.
If there's another thing SILENT HILL proves, its that Roger Avary is a talentless hack who clearly had little or nothing to do with the PULP FICTION script. If copy-and-pasting scenes from a video game into a film script is called "screenwriting" these days, I'm sure there is an infinite supply of 11-year-old schoolboys willing to do it for free. There are two simple options here: go for a dream-like mood-piece in the style of a Dario Argento film that doesn't explain anything, or go for a "uncover-the-secret" type straightforward mystery that explains the entire back-story and all the goings-on. Avary tries to do both, tagging on a long explanation about the secrets of Silent Hill (that smacks of stealing from THE RING), and thereby falls between two stools.
Radha Mitchell does her best in a very limiting role, like Gans she doesn't have much to play with, and her support is extremely poor (weak child actors, Sean Bean trying to do an American accent). The best actors are the CGI-monstrosities, creep amorphous blobs and a giant demon with a massive knife and a triangle on his head. The scenery steals the show.