Silent Hill

One of the most disturbing trends in film over the past 15 years is the sheer abundance of cinematic bilge that has been churned out to cash in on a popular video game. Take for instance House of the Dead, Resident Evil, and Alone in the Dark. These steaming piles of celluloid are from the past few years alone. Such films set the bar so low for video game adaptations that even a live action version of Pac Man would look like Hamlet.

Now along comes Silent Hill, a film based upon game which I must confess I have never played, let alone heard of, prior to about thirty minutes before I entered the theater. One could infer from this statement that I am either extemely uncool or simply not a part of the target audience for this movie, but allow me to say it now – I legitimately enjoyed this film. Actually, to say that I “enjoyed” Silent Hill my be a bit of an exaggeration given its often disturbing content; it contains images of such macabre beauty that I was impressed by the visuals alone.

The film’s plot is pieced together from many other horror movie ideas; at times reminiscent of Children of the Corn, Hellraiser, and familiar with stories we’ve seen before but cannot name. While not exceptionally original, the creators of the game were obviously wise enough to crib elements that create the truly creepy town of Silent Hill.

The film opens with parents Rose and Christopher Da Silva (Rahda Mitchell and Sean Bean) frantically chasing after their sleepwalking daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) . Sharon, it seems, is not only prone to sleepwalking up to the edge of a huge nearby waterfall, but also prone to mumbling about Silent Hill immediately after she is tackled and saved by her mother at the last minute. Rose and Christopher wonder what to do to help their poor child. Christopher wants to have Sharon institutionalized, whereas Rose wants to bring Sharon to the infamous ghost town of Silent Hill, West Virginia, to see if the answers lay there. If this idea of therapy sounds strange to you, consider that these people have a child that chronically sleepwalks and yet they live across the street from an enormous waterfall…

Soon after, against her husband’s wishes, Rose surfs a few ghost story websites for info. Faster than you can say, “Bad idea, lady,” she loads her daughter into her SUV and begins her journey to Silent Hill. I suppose the fact that the city has been closed off to the public due to underground coal fires for the past 30 years might make some people think twice about bringing their the child to such a place, but not Rose. Some might be dissuaded from going because the town does not appear on any maps, and still others might be turned away by the strange stories that abound on the internet about Silent Hill. Let’s be honest with ourselves, if Rose makes decisions like a normal human being and doesn’t bring Sharon to Silent Hill we wouldn’t have much of a movie to watch, would we?

Christopher soon discovers that Rose has taken their daughter to Silent Hill and he sets out to find her and stop her. Rose, determined as she is, manages to enter Silent Hill by evading a determined (and fairly hot) female motorcycle cop on her trail. Soon after breaking through the barricade to the city both Rose and Officer Bennett (Laurie Holden) are enveloped in ashes from the still burning coal fire. Officer Bennett crashes her motorcycle in the pursuit, and further ahead something shadowy darts out in front of Rose’s SUV causing her to crash as well. When Rose awakens her daughter Sharon is nowhere to be found…thus she must search the entire ghostly village to find her. In doing so, I dare say you will never again hear the name “Sharon” yelled as often as you will in this film (with the possible exception of an episode of “The Osbournes” wherein Ozzy cannot find the television remote).

At this point, we are introduced to the real “star” of the film, and that is the town of Silent Hill. It appears to be a decent sized town circa 1970’s, burned out and empty, save for shambling creatures with burning skin, bodies strewn up with barbed wire, rat-sized roaches, and a sword-wielding demonic being that looks like he came straight off of an album cover for the decibel-loving gimmick-metal band Manowar.

Enduring all of these horrors is a group of extremely religious fanatics who have survived in the town for the past 30 years in the local church, cut off from the outside world. How they have survived so long without a food source is beyond me but, suffice it to say, when someone from the outside world enters their domain they are immediately suspected of being a witch. I suppose given the shit they see on a daily basis it’s hard to blame them for being a bit superstitious.

Meanwhile, Christopher arrives at the outskirts of Silent Hill only to be met by a local police officer named Gucci (Kim Coates) who offers to escort Christoper into Silent Hill to search for his both his family and for Officer Bennett. Upon entering Silent Hill they find the town empty, but see none of the strange beings that Rose and Officer Bennett see. Christopher senses that his wife is there, and she is, but unbeknownst to him, she seems to be in an entirely different (and separate) dimension.

As for the last act, I will not spoil it. However, just know that things are not exactly as they seem in Silent Hill. There is a story for how and why the town became the hell-on-earth it has become, and while this back-story is intriguing it is not even remotely plausible and not especially scary. Every so often characters say stupid, obvious things that provoke laughter, but director Christophe Gans fills in the cracks of this story with some of the most amazing imagery in recent memory — at times wondrous, at other times unnerving and ghastly. Human beings are flayed, torn asunder, and burned alive. The camera wavers very little in showing these sights — a welcome, yet somewhat uncomfortable change from the watered-down PG-13 snoozers that have begun to define the modern horror genre. If this movie fails it will only solidify the beliefs of studio suits everywhere that “Horror” needs to be less horrifying to be successful.

Studios worship the almighty dollar, yet directors often strive for an artistic vision. It must be said that Gans’ vision for Silent Hill is often awe-inspriring; while it is a gray city covered completely in ashes it is never uninteresting place to see. In the end, you have to respect Gans’ obvious effort to tell a story like this with enough balls to make his audience uncomfortable. Video game adaptation or not, this movie delivers on it’s premise, and doesn’t flinch nearly as much as its audience will.

Silent Hill • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • Running Time: 127 minutes • MPAA Rating: R for strong horror violence and gore, disturbing images, and some language. • Distributed by TriStar Pictures