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    Silent Hill

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

    I’d describe "Silent Hill" as dangerous for your taste. Hear me out. It’s got many creepy scenes, the music is fantastic, the monsters look awesome. That’s all terrific, but the video game-based picture gets increasingly ineffective the longer you watch it. By the end, it’s disintegrated into a creamy-colored, unappetizing mess but the promise it showed early on it compels you to forgive its flaws. You'll convince yourself that this is a good movie. It isn’t.

    Rose (Radha Mitchell) is driving her adoptive daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) to the mysterious ghost town of Silent Hill - the subject of her persisting nightmares - hoping the trip will give them the answers they seek. Unfortunately, when Rose and Sharon arrive, they are quickly separated. Accompanied by motorcycle police officer Cybil Bennett (Laurie Holden), Rose must find her daughter and uncover the mystery of Silent Hill.

    The initial setup and look of the movie are dynamite. With eerie music, disturbing monsters aplenty,," Silent Hill" drips with mood and atmosphere. The film is set up like a horror survival video game (appropriate considering the source material), with the protagonist finding herself in a location she can't escape, hopelessly outmatched by creatures, and running around trying to piece together what's happening. It’s genuinely frightening.

    When the picture focuses on the mystery to be solved, it’s a mess. If anything, the story plays out too similarly to a video game. People pick up clues and know exactly what to do with them, characters make lightning-quick decisions about where to go next, they don’t stop to ask questions but still find all the right answers. No one explains anything while legions of creatures appear briefly enough for fans to go "I know those!" Sure they look good, but what does it all mean? You have no idea - until a giant exposition dump tells you everything you need to know in a grainy, “spooky” flashback. Detective work? What detective work?

    In the end, I’m not convinced the film makes a whole lot of sense. Some of the revelations about Sharon raise serious questions about the point of this ordeal - if there even was one. I'm not saying you have to dislike the film but consider the following: If the forces behind the madness of Silent Hill want what they say they want at the end… why are they even after Sharon? Shouldn’t they be helping her instead of trying to rip her to shreds? What have the people living inside of Silent Hill been eating in the decades they’ve been trapped there? Why does everyone speak in needlessly cryptic patterns in some scenes but leave clues (such as missing room numbers) for people to easily find? What does the big sequence at the end mean when you consider the film’s “cautionary message”? I could go on, but we’d be dealing in spoiler territory. Bottom line is, this movie’s script and story weren't sufficiently polished.

    “Silent Hill” is a leaky horror film. Answers to the questions you’re asking don’t make the film more interesting, if anything it makes it more confusing. There are many successful elements… but so what when the story is incoherent? “Silent Hill” is not a good movie, but it makes you think it is. Don’t be fooled. (Fullscreen version on DVD, September 2, 2016)

    5
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    adamwatchesmovies@  7.2.2015 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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