Silent Hill Review

Horror Movie Talk

Do you want to feel like you are watching someone play a video game when you watch a movie? Well Silent Hill is the right movie for you.

Synopsis

Rose Da Silva brings her adopted daughter, Sharon, to the eerie ghost town of Silent Hill, hoping to find a cure for Sharon’s mysterious condition and learn why she is having nightmares about the town. Following a police chase and a brutal car accident, Sharon vanishes. Rose finds herself in a spooky ookie alternate dimension that occasionally turns into an even spookier OOKIER dimension filled with unimaginable horrors. As she frantically searches for her missing daughter she meets the townsfolk and finds out the towns LORE.

Review of Silent Hill

Having not played the video game this film is based on, I can already tell you that’s its a faithful adaptation. Because watching the first half of this film is like watching someone play a video game. And unfortunately they are not very good at it. I was left craving more cut scenes or maybe more scenes cut.

Some of the iconic imagery from the game of Pyramid head and the nurses are wedged in as non-sequiturs. I assumed that the film would make some kind of effort to explain them, but nope. I still have no idea what their significance is to the story.

The thing that the movie really has going for it is production design, and vibes. The film is very moody and feels oppressive.

Unfortunately, the writing and acting is distractingly bad at times. Honestly, it felt like they spent all the budget on the production design, and then midway realized they never bothered with a script.

The last half of the movie redeems itself in some ways. The action and horror ramps up, the exposition finally gives us something to hold on to, and it actually ends up telling a story.

Overall, I felt like the film was too slow and uneven. There was some great body horror and memorable scenes, but unfortunately they are wrapped in a pretty forgettable movie.

Score

4/10