The Silent Hill Movie is My Guilty Pleasure Horror Movie
By: Nik S
Ever since the Super Mario Bros. movie that debuted in 1993 video game movies have become a bit of a laughing stock to movie goers. It seems like any time there's a video game movie that's announced the internet does a collective annoyed sigh. When the Silent Hill movie was announced in the early 2000s, I was actually looking forward to it. I was the kid at the high school lunch table who kept saying that the PlayStation 2 Silent Hill games were the absolute best horror games. When it came out in 2006 it got mixed reviews, some saying that it was just a cash grab and fan service while others said it was just an enjoyable movie. I was part of the latter group, but over time I feel like I had to hide my love for this movie in shame on the internet, as the popular opinion is that it's a shameless cash grab.
While the movie is set in a North American town, the film is actualy a French-Canadian production. It's directed and co-written by Christophe Gans, known for his work in lesser known horror movies like H.P. Lovecraft's: Necronomicon. The film is an adaptation of Konami's popular video game series Silent Hill. It stars Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, and Laurie Holden that take the role of characters from the video game series or are inspired by them. The film uses unique set designs and lots of practical effects with some clever usage of CG effects where needed.
The film started filming sometime in the early 2000s. It took Gans about five years to get the rights to start adapting Silent Hill, and shortly after he began writing the script with Roger Avery almost immediately. They had a $50 million budget and was shot on sound sets and on location in Canada. You can tell that most of that budget went into the costumes of a lot of horrific monsters from Silent Hill 2 specifically. This is where I fell in love with this movie is the beautifully crafted creatures that you can tell were made by fans or someone with an eye for the fine details.
The movie follows Rose (Mitchell) who decides to take a trip to a small town called Silent Hill with her adopted daughter Sharon (Ferland). Turns out that Sharon has been having reoccurring nightmares and screams out about Silent Hill. She doesn't tell her husband, Christopher (Bean), as she doesn't want him involved in case something bad were to happen. On her journey she runs into a cop Cybal Bennett (Holden) who is suspicious that she is kidnapping Sharon and follows her to Silent Hill. Upon arriving in Silent Hill, Rose gets into a car accident and finds that her daughter is missing. Rose must search for her daughter in the ever changing city, while fighting off monsters, cultists, and the deep dark secrets of her daughter.
It's not a movie for everyone, and it certainly doesn't break any new ground. There are, however, some very well placed shots that seemed rather hard to pull off (moving between two rooms simultaneously without editing). It's definitely one that you can watch with a group of friends or by yourself and just enjoy the sights and horrors that Silent Hill has to offer. The acting is alright at best, and the directing is passable, but everything else just works well.
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