Movie Review; "Silent Hill" (2006)

Video game-based movies are and always have been, mediocre..if not bad. We have seen this repeated many, many times over. Naming these movies would just end up taking the entire space I have for this entry. My anticipation for Silent Hill was that it would break this trend. That it would break the mold of the usual bland video-game based movie adaptation. Needless to say, a lot of critics(movie and videogame alike) were all over this movie before it even started on how faithful it was to the original Konami PlayStation game. Anticipations grew. People got excited. Including myself.

Rose Da Silva (Radha Mitchell) is worried about her daughter Sharon(Jodelle Ferland). Her sleepwalking trips take her to the strangest, most dangerous places. She is worried that one day she might meet her end in one of these terrible spells. She decides to take Sharon to the very place she keeps screaming about in her dreams.

While her husband Christopher (Sean Bean) researches about Silent Hill at home, Rose takes her there, thinking it would help the child come full circle with her nightmares, only tom lose her in the small deserted town.

What transpires is a tiring search throughout the town for her lost daughter filled with encounters with demonic creatures and and the very fires of the coal fires deep in the pits of the ghost town.

Though the movie was very atmospheric and at times genuinely creepy. There were these little irritations that came about throught the movie that led to the deterioration of the original level of anticipation i had. I didn't expect much with the acting (Radha Mitchell was mediorcre while Sean Bean was...meh) as that the best performance I had seen in the movie was by the 9 year old Jodelle Ferland.
I do not, however, question the movie's faithfulness to the original game. The inclusion of the zombie babies and the evil nurses was mandatory and the appearance of Pyramidhead was a wonderful delight (though relatively short and sensless).
As a movie Silent Hill was, like other vg-movies like Doom and Resident Evil, mediocre, but not terrible. Its faithfullness to the source material was what made it what it is. Video game based movies are really hard to judge. The congruence with the source material has to be balanced with its aesthetics as a film. This balance is yet to be met. Silent Hill was pretty close, though.

Rocketboy's rating:*** (3 out of 5)