Overall Rating
  Awesome: 20.45%
Worth A Look: 23.86%
Just Average: 23.3%
Pretty Crappy: 25%
Sucks: 7.39%
11 reviews, 110 user ratings
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| Silent Hill |
by Dawn Taylor
"'Watching 'Silent Hill' is very much like playing a computer game.'"
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Like a big, glossy coffee table book of artfully morbid photographs, "Silent Hill" dazzles with its deliciously creepy visuals. But, like a coffee table book, that's all there is – there's precious little story, the characters are one-dimensional, and other than the act of flipping pages, there's nothing to involve the viewer.Having recently watched a DVD of 2005's "The Dark," I was struck by a strong sense of dejá vu.Both films star pretty blond actresses (in "The Dark" it was Maria Bello, here it's Radha Mitchell) who must battle evil forces in a dark alternate world to save their daughters. Both dark alternate worlds feature little girls who are dead ringers for the blond's missing child. Both blonds are married to Sean Bean, who runs around in Real Time looking concerned. The similarities are so uncanny, in fact, that one can't help but wonder what Bean thought when he read the scripts. ("Hey, I can get paid twice for playing the exact same part in the exact same movie!" is my guess.)
Like an any self-respecting geek, I've played my fair share of computer games. I even bought Silent Hill, as it came so highly recommended as a good, scary adventure scenario. I couldn't play it, though, because I needed a new video card for my aging PC. (Not that my needing an upgrade is germane to my review, but it'll go a ways toward establishing my dorkiness.)
Anyway. Watching "Silent Hill," the movie, is very much like playing a computer game. More precisely, it's like watching someone else play a computer game. Because while you have no control over what the characters do, you still follow along doing the keyboard commands in your head. Example: A body, crucified with barbed wire in a bathroom stall, has something in its mouth. (Reach between the wire and take the thing out of the mouth, you think. That's a clue.) Mitchell, as blond mom Rose, dutifully reaches in and takes the thing out of the mouth. (Look at it!) Rose sees that whatever it is, it's from a hotel. (Go find the hotel!) Rose goes to the hotel, where she discovers one of her daughter's drawings in the registry slot for room 111. (Go to room 111!) Rose finds rooms 109 and 113, but there's no room 111. There is, however, a huge painting on the wall. (Use the knife in your inventory to slash the painting!) Rose finds the door to room 111 behind the painting.
Etcetera.
Mitchell spends the first third of the film doing little more than running around yelling her daughter's name which, as her daughter's name is Sharon, led me to imagine a better, funnier movie starring Ozzy Osbourne. "Sharon! There's faceless bleeping nurses blocking the bleeping hallway!" my alternate Ozzy would cry. "Sharon! I can't make it through the bleeping courtyard because of all the bleeping ratty roach creatures attacking me!" he'd yell. Of course Sharon, being the smart one, would calmly tell him to reload the game and try again from his last saved position, and he'd solve the puzzle in three or four tries.
With a script by Roger Avary ("Pulp Fiction," "Killing Zoe") and direction by Christophe Gans ("Brotherhood of the Wolf") this film has a pedigree that promises something extra-extra-special. But Avary and Gans make the most fundamental mistake common to bad horror flicks – they don't make us care about the characters, so we don't give a damn what happens to them. We know that Rose/Mitchell and Christopher/Bean are married and that Sharon is adopted. That's the extent of their backstory -- really, they're all just bodies running around, picking things up, and going from room to room to find new monsters, just like in a video game. So no matter how gruesomely creative the monsters are, there's no suspense. There's no fear, which renders the entire exercise moot. Monsters roam the hallways like in any good video game, but there's no explanation as to what they are or why they're there, and there's never even a moment's doubt that our heroine will traverse every ghoul-filled corridor and escape every knife-wielding Thing with Another Thing on Its Head ... so who cares?Pretty as it is – and oh, the visuals are terrific – "Silent Hill" is an abject failure as a horror film, offering gorgeous Clive Barker-inspired art direction run amuck with nothing actually scary going on. Two full hours of this ends with a plot resolution that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, making the whole effort a sad waste of everyone's time.
link directly to this review at https://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.php?movie=14326&reviewer=413
originally posted: 04/21/06 16:52:43
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USA
21-Apr-2006 (R)
DVD: 22-Aug-2006
UK
N/A
Australia
31-Aug-2006
![[trailer]](/images/icon/trailericon.gif) Trailer
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