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Silent Hill

Video game adaptation won't satisfy fans or newcomers

By BRETT MICHEL | April 26, 2006

2.0 Stars

The popular psychological horror video-game series set within three concurrent dimensions (barren reality; vaporous purgatory; corroded nightmare) of a singular haunted town is reverently re-created (a camera angle here, a music cue there) by director Christophe Gans, but does it work beyond homage? Roger Avary’s script deliberately follows standard game-design paradigms (clue at point A points to a clue at point B, and so on); this may work when you’re directing an avatar with a game pad, but it makes Radha Mitchell’s Rose appear crazier than the burg’s damned inhabitants as she searches for her somnambulant daughter (Jodelle Ferland). The film is unintentionally hilarious and impenetrable for newcomers and a hollow disappointment for fans. As you’re being subjected to reams of expository dialogue and sub-Crucible cries of “Burn the witch!”, the thought might occur that Silent Hill could have worked . . . as a silent film.

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