Silent Hill Review

Written by: terrorwatch   

Having never really been into the whole console gaming thing myself I cant put the movie against the game on this one but my friends tell me good things... So I finally checked out the one film I have been dying to see for years now, Silent Hill. The movie based on the whole game that first came to us on the PlayStation in the late 90's I believe. As I said I wasn't a big gamer but to me what I saw while watching my friends button bash there way through the stages was pretty twisted and cool. I have to say up to the last third of the movie it was all good, but sadly I have to moan.... As the cast goes there isn't really much here, a few major roles and the rest of the human count is pretty low as there all somewhat of the silent types.

The cast included, Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Laurie Holden, Deborah Kara Unger and Kim Coates. It was really cool to have a close cast because you seem to got allot more out of it in the long run for the driven emotion as you get tied to your characters on screen. As a added bonus Sean Bean was on screen, he's excellent and I really like the whole he hadhad to endure through the whole movie. The movie basically is about a mothers worry has her child acts stranger and stranger and through sleep walking and other night terrors mutters the name, Silent Hill. After investigation the desperate mother ends up driving her young child to this "ghost town" and gets more than she bargained for...

After a little bit of research for the movie I found that "its just like the game" which in respect is cool. Because the biggest let down Resident Evil wasn't nothing like the game and in turn made the movie to be horrid from the start. So was this a good movie? Well course it was, scenes were so gritty and raw it felt so terrifying. The shots of the movie basically run through the scale of tones in this one, we have light scenes and are thrown to complete darkness and I liked how the two were mixed together and even in the daylight Silent Hill still manages to scare which is pretty cleaver I think. However you know what really impressed me the most... the way I got chills when I saw the monsters on screen.

Now does sound lame I know but I've seen a fair few movies in my time and nothing beats that time when I first saw Hellraiser and his coenobites on screen. To me I thought now this is horror, this is horror at its best, these are the gods of the horror world, above everything, nothing could beat this bunch of hell fiends. See when the monsters came to light in Silent Hill I felt the same overpowering presence, it really impressed me how such a movie could recreate that feeling of madness you get seeing something so evil and creepy. Now this is where I want to cry and moan... OK come on the movie is cool with thrilling scenes, some really cool suspense chase scenes and some very cool special effects. But the movie went from a masterpiece to a Dagon wannabe within minuets.

I was loving the creepy streets of Silent Hill until it become Dagon, that good for what it is B movie. I didn't really gel well with the whole church business at all and really ruined the movie for me as the way it was set reminded me to much of Dagon and it felt like I was watching something I've watched before. However two great things came from it, the monster with the thousands of arms, which was absolutely thrilling to see and the head burning shots of the police woman. These scenes picked at bad 3rd of the movie I hated. You cant beat a movie with a great ending and yes this has it too. Very subtle and not crazy it manages to let us know what really happened. It shocked me, it impressed me and also it manages to feel smart with minimal effort at all. I really loved the little twist at the end and I thought for a movie so violent and crazy this ending really suited the movie just right. So did I enjoy it, well if you read my baffle all the way through you will notice that I really did enjoy the movie. Its funny because this time I thought in The Dark (2006). But as a personal favourite in this movie I haven't got one, nothing really stood out to me in way of characters it was overshadowed by the great special effects and on screen grit that I I'm going to hate the movie and be let down when I see it. But in fact I really enjoyed it and will be the DVD I spend my hard earned money on when the extended DVD is released.