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Overall Rating : 4.5/10
Directed By : Christophe Gans
Radha Mitchell (Man on Fire)
Sean Bean (Flightplan)
Laurie Holden (Fantastic Four)
Deborah Kara Unger (White Noise)
Supplied By : Sony Pictures
Film Reviewed By : Rick Blalock
Date Reviewed : Aug. 2, 2006
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| PLOT The eerie and deserted ghost town of Silent Hill draws a young mother desperate to find a cure for her only child's illness. Unable to accept the doctor's diagnosis that her daughter should be permanently institutionalized for psychiatric care, Rose flees with her child, heading for the abandoned town in search of answers -- and ignoring the protests of her husband. It's soon clear this place is unlike anywhere she's ever been. It's smothered by fog, inhabited by a variety of strange beings and periodically overcome by a living Darkness that literally transforms everything it touches. As Rose searches for her little girl, she begins to learn the history of the strange town and realizes that her daughter is just a pawn in a larger game. |
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| THE REVIEW In SILENT HILL Rose and Chris DaSilva are having problem's with their adopted daughter Sharon. Young Sharon sleepwalks at night and often talks in her sleep, in the midst of her muttering she always mentions the town of "Silent Hill". It turns out that this Silent Hill that the girl speaks of is the town on Silent Hill West Virginia, which happens to be the town in which Sharon's birth mother is from. Rose, despite husband Chris' wishes plans to drive out to Silent Hill with Sharon to try to get a grasp on what is triggering the child's trauma. While asking for directions to the West Virginia town, people know about it, but seem to not want to talk about the town, but all they offer about it, is that it was a town that burned down via a coal fire killing all of it's occupants. Before heading on the trip, Rose was forewarned about the town being haunted and despite the road being closed, she proceeds to go anyway. When she arrives she discovers a sleepy town with no life at all, everything seems normal except from the sky, falls a rain of ash....she also discovers that Sharon is missing. It's not soon to Rose finds out that the town is unlike any other, it ultimately transforms into another dimension periodically, where everything burns during this she encounters the walking dead, various demonic creatures and a little girl that looks identical to Sharon who is trying to tell her something. As Rose fights for answers, and for her life, she is joined by a tough Police Woman by the name of Cybil Bennett. Well when this first hit theaters a few months back, I thought that this looked amazing for a video game adaptation. But now that I have actually watched it, it's just like any other video game film I have seen. These video game inspired adaptations often have all the potential in the world to be great films, but they try too hard to have their own imagination. There are many things you can do in a video game that may look cool in video game sense, but when you try to translate the flashy-ness to the big screen in the form of film, it just doesn't work as well(for instance the MORTAL KOMBAT films). To replicate the imagination found in video games, filmmakers use use lots of CGI...so much in fact that the CGI overshadows a great story, making it less effective - which is my overall feeling about SILENT HILL. I mean, we have this intriguing story of a mother in a creepy town, she doesn't know why she's there but the reasoning has to do with her daughter Sharon, who is now missing, and while trying to find her, she is lead on a path by a little girl who looks identical to her daughter but strangely she is charred and burned. There are moments where the film is serious into the search and the mysterious little girl, only to break into the transformation of the town into a CGI engulfed underworld moments later, that to me looks anything but serious. I guess what i'm trying to get at is that it's hard for the film to stay balanced, one minute it's serious, the next Rose is being attacked by giant cockroaches, minutes later they disappear, the town is normal again and the investigation and search is back on - kinda seems like intermission sessions to me. I really have no complaints about the acting however. Rose played by Radha Mitchell, gives a fairly strong performance, especially towards the ending. Sean Bean wasn't used a lot throughout the film so I can't really comment. Deborah Kara Unger, had a small but pivotal role as Dahlia Gillespie, the mother of the mysterious little girl Alessa, her role was of a mother who lost her own daughter to the fire, and a person who would be in eternal grief, and she does a great job displaying this. My favorite role/roles were played by young Jodelle Ferland who had the task of taking on both roles of Sharon and Alessa. The characters are not that much different but Ferland, was able to give the two enough of their own individual characteristics to distinguish the two - or else we'd have another one of those "evil twin vs. good twin" type stories. As I hinted, I'm not really a big fan of video game films and it's always for the same reason, as said earlier, the plots just never stay solid, for visuals this film is something different, but for the plot, it's an up and down scenario for me. |
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| GORE
METER 4.5/10 All of the film's gore looks to be simulated through CGI, but the few kills that it does have, are somewhat impressive. |
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| MUSICAL
SCORE 6/10 The score gave the film an eerie feeling and I loved it, sort of wispy, and fitting to it's atmosphere. |
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| OVERALL
IMPRESSION OF THE FILM I don't know, since I haven't even played the video game, only have seen it...maybe I just didn't grasp the concept as a whole. Perhaps fans of the game will like this more than I did. But as a film, SILENT HILL has a great plot in my opinion but that is all distracted and focused on less than it should be. This DVD will be released on Aug. 8th, 2006 |
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