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Silent Hill is an onslaught. It devours your senses at every turn and immerses you in a thorough integration from a video game adaptation to a major motion picture. It is incredibly well-done—the artistry of the director, Christophe Gans, is an awesome experience. I must take a second out to note that this film is not for everyone. The images and subject matter are so disturbing at times that they can cause visual nightmares the second you see them. For horror fans and video gamers, this is a wish realized—a completely true representation of the video game experience in a motion-picture format.
Silent Hill is about Rose, who takes her adopted daughter to a ghost town called Silent Hill to uncover the truth about the girl’s past. She loses the girl and fights the demons of Silent Hill to reveal the mystery and to win her back. If there is any fault to be made in the film, it would be in the screenplay, which is somewhat aggravating to anyone not familiar to the video games. It leaves too many questions unanswered and doesn’t ever nail down the question, “Why is this happening to them?” and just assumes the viewer will accept what is happening as if to just say, “Go with us on this.”
The actors do a fair job, the main two being Radha Mitchell (from Pitch Black) and Sean Bean. The production design blows you away, it’s so good. It’s a terrible shame that movies like this never get design awards, as it is simply amazing. To give you another example of great design in a horror genre, watch 13 Ghosts. The house in that movie should have won an Academy Award. Especially when you learn that it is a fully functional and fully intact house, not just sets parsed together. Anyway, I’m wandering from the point. Silent Hill is equally expansive; I sat there wondering how the hell they managed to do all of that with their budget.
The secret to all of this is Christophe Gans. He is a true artist who loves film. And you can tell. When someone does this once, it may be a fluke, but he has done it before with his previous movie, The Brotherhood of the Wolf. Anyone who has seen that movie knows what I’m talking about; he is a fantastic director.
I’m going to finish by reiterating that this movie is not for everyone, as it has some very disturbing images, but for horror fans and for fans of the Silent Hill franchise, you will love this film. It is simply the best adaptation of a video game ever made.
