Silent Hill

2006 video game horror movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A woman's somnambulistic daughter's mentions of Silent Hill, a ghost town still burning subterraneanly after some sort of  mine disaster

I'm forgiving this movie for two things: its utter incomprehensibility and a few sort-of stupid moments that probably contributed to the utter incomprehensibility. And the reason I can forgive it for those things is because I just had to appreciate the ambition here, the creative and often haunting visuals, and an intriguing and gradually unfolding story even though it never made a lot of sense. One of the characters even says "I don't know what's going on here," and that was exactly what I was thinking. Not a clue. This pervasive, foreboding creepiness is relentless, and there's really no room at all for exposition. You wouldn't be able to see it anyway thanks to a constant slow drizzle of ash. There's a moment where a little girl comes along to explain things, sort of, but all that really does is open the door to allow all the other characters to start talkin' stupid. And there's a line--"Look at me. I'm burning."--that made me either giggle, chuckle, or roar with laughter. Still, that imagery is terrific, and just the amount of sets used for this poor woman--a hot Radha Mitchell--and her lesbian cop buddy (lesbian in my mind anyway) is impressive. And I like how the camera kind of swoons through the titular town. The ashes and dilapidated sets are the perfect scenery for a town so haunted by its own past. The acting's fine for this sort of thing with Alison Krige shining as the creepily-fanatic Christabella. Quite the name there. The "acting" from the CGI monster children or zombie nurses or whatever other kinds of creatures are in this thing--one is a pyramid-headed thing that is really strange--is a little off. They're all contorted and jerky, partially because of the animation, I think, but probably a little because they're supposed to be like that. They look like they come straight from a video game, something that makes sense since this is a movie based on a video game. It's the sort of thing that should have been a red flag for me because there hasn't been a great movie based on a video game since Super Mario Brothers. I actually swore off movies based on video games until they give me a live-action Q-Bert, but I watched this anyway. I wonder if it would make more sense if I was familiar with the video game. The score is mostly music direct from the game apparently, and although that kind of sounds weird to me--a 1980's kid used to the sounds that the Atari was capable of producing--it's really pretty effective here. Anyway, this movie's worth watching if you don't mind movies that don't make a lot of sense. Personally, I have no problem with movies that seem more like dreams than straight narratives, and this kind of works like that.