Reel Reviews: ‘Silent Hill’ packs pointless plot with gruesome gore
First of all, what is “American Dreamz” doing in the measly number nine slot at the box office? And what is this film doing in the number one slot at the box office? I’m guessing it’s just due to some amazingly well-crafted publicity, not because this film itself is amazing.
Full of grotesque violence, generic ghost-town settings and religious overtones, “Silent Hill” tries to be a creative horror film but winds up toppling down on itself because of too much effort.
Radha Mitchell (“Melinda and Melinda”) and Sean Bean (“The Island”) are a happy, married couple. But when their adopted daughter (Jodelle Ferland, “They”) keeps having incessant nightmares and crying out the words “Silent Hill” in her sleep, mom and dad realize that someone has to take initiative. Is therapy the best solution, you ask? Boring! Let’s take her to the abandoned town she keeps screaming about and we’re bound to find a solution there.
That exemplifies the three-second thought process of the film’s protagonist (Mitchell). And “Silent Hill” wastes only two minutes before getting mom and daughter to the entrance of the haunted town. The little girl goes missing after a car crash and mom spends the rest of the film looking for her despite the raining bits of ash and the inexplicable monsters that appear out of nowhere. “Haunted schmaunted,” the mother says, at least by her attitude, for even though she’s chatting with ghosts and facing death in almost every scene, she never acts like she’s in danger. Or is that because she’s one of the ghosts already?
It is painfully clear where “Silent Hill” gets its inspiration from. Based on a video game of the same title, it features some wonderfully gruesome moments with people getting their skin ripped off, eaten by bugs and being burned alive. I have one more question: When did a video game translation into film ever become fruitful?
Even though the film revels nicely in its own gothic state, the storyline is almost like a ghost itself: Completely dead. As we are moved from one series of events to another, there is never any explanation about what is going on and we never understand anyone’s motivations. It’s almost as if we are watching a video game on the big screen until a lengthy explanation is given near the end in hopes that everything will make sense. Unfortunately, not everything does.
The supporting characters are terribly over the top, as exemplified by a leather-clad policewoman (Laurie Holden, “The Majestic”) and a dusty, grey-haired ghost (Deborah Kara Unger, “White Noise”). While the film shows some amazing special effects, it takes itself too seriously and is probably comprehendible only to the small percentage of audience members who have actually played the video game. The French director, Christophe Gans (“Crying Freeman”), manages to make “Silent Hill” a consistently disturbing film with slithering strings of barbed wire and scalpel-wielding nurse-corpses as sources of terror. Creative but nonsensical. Weird but meandering. I think this game is over.
Casey T. Allen is a critic for the Utah Statesman. Comments can be sent to caseyal@cc.usu.edu.