Starts out well only to fall apart near the end

Rating: 6/10 (4 September 2006)

I enjoyed the atmosphere of Silent Hill and the visuals. It starts off as a mystery that keeps us in suspense for a long while. It works well when keeping us in the dark, making us second guess what's going on. I liked it a lot up until the point where it suddenly starts giving us answers. After that, the movie starts to unravel into a very gory conclusion that simply takes away from the movie's finer points. I didn't mind the ending, but I think this movie would've worked better if it had not given us so many answers. Granted, I have never played the game, so maybe I'm being a little too harsh.
Still on to the plot. Rose (Radha Mitchell) is the mother of Sharon (Jodelle Ferland). Sharon has been going into trances and sleepwalking and muttering things about a town called Silent Hill. Rose, refusing to accept that her daughter needs to see a psychiatrist, decides to take off with Sharon to the town of Silent Hill to get answers, leaving her husband Christopher (Sean Bean)in the dark. Christopher, once he finds out where they are going, goes after them, but neither he nor Rose knows what terrible events transpired at the town of Silent Hill.
Soon Rose is looking for her daughter in the town of Silent Hill after an accident in which Sharon disappears. She is soon joined by a traffic cop (Laurie Holden) who while pursuing Rose on a high speed chase up to Silent Hill was in an accident herself. At first the traffic cop doesn't believe what Rose has to say, but together they discover that Silent Hill is not your average town, and suddenly the officer is helping Rose to find Sharon.
I do believe this movie was a little overlong, and I still can't accept the answers we are finally given. But other than that, Silent Hill had a lot of good things going for it. Still can I recommend it after seeing it? Not quite because I think it would've worked better if it had remained more mysterious and less gory. In fact, the last few minutes of the movie would've had more impact had the movie left us more in the dark.