DVD Reviews

Silent Hill

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• Starring: Deborah Kara Unger
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After another dangerous bout of sleepwalking, Rose (Mitchell) decides to take her adopted daughter Sharon to the town she speaks of in her sleep, Silent Hill. Upon arriving at the eerie dump, it becomes clear that there are dark forces both occupying and ruling Silent Hill. Rose must find and protect Sharon whilst discovering secrets about her past and finding a way out alive. Arguably one of the scariest video games ever made, Silent Hill was an experience with both an unrivaled sense of atmosphere and a suitably bleak setting. Essentially, it was ripe for a film adaptation, seemingly already having a lot of the ingredients in place. When Roger Avery (Pulp Fiction, Rules of Attraction) was announced as the fledging project's screenwriter, it was slowly coming together. Now, it's hard to see Silent Hill as anything other than a disappointment; it's simply too loyal to its source material in all the wrong places. You get the feeling that director Gans and Avery saw that most of the work was done for them and just got to work on creating some nasty set pieces (which there are a couple of, to be fair) while ignoring any kind of character development. It's like watching a computer game that you have no control over - one sequence in particular involving a rope and a huge pit will have you reaching for your joypad. The sub-plot, introducing non-game character Christopher (Bean replaying the exact same character from Hill rip-off The Dark) as Rose's husband, was obviously brought in for exposition; but is incredibly poorly paced with a mis-cast Bean doing a woeful American accent. The ending, too, will have you groaning and wondering what the point was. Poor.

Review by Mike Sheridan