Based on the popular Japanese classic games series from Konami, Silent Hill the movie stars Radha Mitchell of "Pitch Black" and "Man on Fire" fame as Rose the adoptive mother of a young girl Sharon (played by Jodelle Ferland, who was also a weird super speed child in an episode of Smallville... aceller8 if memory serves) . The young girl frequently goes sleepwalking and ends up about to plunge off a cliff muttering about a place called Silent Hill. Rose and husband Chris (played by Sean Bean) manage to stop her falling to her death and then the mother thinks it would be a good idea to take the strange child to Silent Hill. On the way there she gets pulled over by a motorcycle cop, Cybil Bennett (played by Laurie Holden) from whom she does a runner towards Silent Hill. The Cop follows they get into Silent Hill crash and then things go seriously downhill. Rose promptly looses her daughter but keeps seeing her running through the abandoned town and every now and again reality goes a bit strange and monsters come sometimes literally out of the woodwork. Cybil and Rose join up to look for Sharon and find their way out as they seem to have been cut off from the rest of the world. Meantime Chris and another cop, Thomas Gucci (played by Kim Coates) search a seemingly parallel Silent Hill sans monsters for the cop and mother plus daughter.

The story from what I gathered (I have only played the third game and seen someone play bits of the first) the story seems to be an amalgam of the first 3 games at least in broad strokes terms. Visually it's well done keeping to the visual style of the games with decayed deserted place suddenly morphing into hellish realm full of twisted monsters. The cast is quite good, Sean Bean seemed a little under used, Radha Mitchell and the daughter are both fairly good, Laurie Holden is ok as the cop, Alice Krige is good as the somewhat twisted head of the cult and Debra Kara Unger as the mad woman Dahlia is quite good. The cop in the outside real world Silent Hill was ok but a lot of the rest of the cast seem to be a bit generic. I felt it lacked depth to a degree it could have done with some more polish the whole husbands part of the story seemed a bit slipshod

In conclusion if you find yourself in a town called Silent Hill and its raining ash you're fucked.

Hello.

Well, this is the first one of these I've done. The idea of these back and forth malarkeys is that I cover any additional thoughts I have on the film, which is my excuse for not writing as much :P

Right then. Silent Hill. Let me start by saying I've not played any of the games, so I came at the film fairly fresh, having only seen the trailer.

The film opens with a frantic search for Sharon (Jodelle Ferland, the daughter) which not only sets the pacing for the film (generally fairly measured, menacing sections interspersed with fast action) but also provides us with a glimpse into hell.

Once Rose (Radha Mitchell, the mother) gets there (losing Sharon on the way) we are greeted with a fog-bound ghost town under a steady rain of ash. The fog not only gives a mildly trapped feeling as well as allowing things to get close to you before you see them, but also harks back to computer games in days of your where fog was used to keep the amount of models on screen down (and probably the first game to carry the name)

The transition of the ghost town into a sort of hell on earth is well done, feeling a little like the transitions in Constantine. The various creatures encountered are well done, with a theme of hideous deformation, and jerky movement that works very well.

The parallel story of Chris, the husband (Sean Bean) trying to track down his wife and daughter mainly results in us finding out that the strangeness spreads further than the boundaries of the town.

The film has a couple of twists that are well done, and I liked the cyclic switch between menacing silence and hell.

Overall, I think it should have been scarier than it was. Although the visuals were suitably shocking and the action fast and frantic, only a few of the horror scenes were actually that horrific. Perhaps itss the way it was directed or cut.

The ending left the door open for a sequel, but I think a good chunk of the plot options were already used up in this film, so the writer would have to work fairly hard to give a sequel much depth.

Overall, pretty good. If you like weird horror and there's nothing amazing on, see it at the cinema or rent.

Having read a few other people's opinions on Silent Hill (Tycho from Penny Arcade had some quite strong views on the subject) its hard not to be influenced by that but having had time to ruminate on the film a bit seen it again and had the benefit of some sleep (must stop writing reviews at 1:30 in the morning) I would add the following to my comments.

The lack of depth I commented on becomes more apparent the second time round it really is a quite flimsy film, compared to the game in the series I've played (Silent Hill 3) there is much more depth to the story and the dramatic tension and pacing is over a far longer period than the film is capable of doing simply because a film of over 2 and half to 3 hours becomes unwieldy.

But then not all the game time is spent on story so with a lot of the running about taken out the story can only be a few hours at most.

The scariness aspect that Byrn mentions is more apparent on reflection. I mean it really isn't scary it has some disturbing imagery but if you which is heightened by clever use of sound effects but its still not scary, some would have been just odd things without the sound to give them context, for example the nurses take away the sound track and they're nurses with towels wrapped round their heads whose uniforms don't fit properly and who need a bath. I don't know if it's just lack of caring about the characters in the film or if there is just some fundamental piece missing from the film that would take it from the weird disturbing imagery to scary. But something in there doesn't really work, there a bits that should be horrific and just aren't.

The pacing is quite different form the games in that they tend to have a lead up with small bits of informations slowly fleshing out the story in this case there were a few bits and bobs of misc plot then at some point near the end Bam! the whole story laclass out in one chunk. There might have been more tension if they had managed that better.

So they nailed the visual aspect it's just the rest that didn't quite cut the mustard.