I can't compare this to the video game it is based on, as I've never seen or played it, but as a stand-alone horror movie it does work. The premise is that an adoptive mother (Radha Mitchell of PITCH BLACK) wants to find out why her nine-year-old daughter is having nightmares about a place called Silent Hill, so she decides to take her there against the wishes of her husband (Sean Bean of THE DARK). Once they get there they seem to be in a sort of other dimension, where there is perpetual fog and these disturbing looking creatures. Not only does she have to find her daughter, who has disappeared, but also what her secret is-and also how to escape from this place.
As with FINAL DESTINATION 3, the use of computer effects to create gore is kind of amazing. Not only are people dismembered, there's a scene in which a monster pulls the skin off of a struggling woman as if it's peeling a banana. The goriest scene perhaps, is the barbed wire scene towards the end of the picture. Compared to the recent abysmal adaptations of DOOM and AFRAID OF THE DARK, SILENT HILL is a pleasant surprise.
I can't compare this to the video game it is based on, as I've never seen or played it, but as a stand-alone horror movie it does work. The premise is that an adoptive mother (Radha Mitchell of PITCH BLACK) wants to find out why her nine-year-old daughter is having nightmares about a place called Silent Hill, so she decides to take her there against the wishes of her husband (Sean Bean of THE DARK). Once they get there they seem to be in a sort of other dimension, where there is perpetual fog and these disturbing looking creatures. Not only does she have to find her daughter, who has disappeared, but also what her secret is-and also how to escape from this place.
