Talk us through itRose is worried about her daughter Sharon due to midnight sleep walks and the girl constantly moaning about Silent Hill in her slumber. Against her husband's advice, the dude cut off her cash card! - Rose takes Sharon to the ghost town of Silent Hill to see if this will somehow help her daughter. We quickly learn the coal mining town was abandoned due to fires breaking out below ground, and in a cool development they are still smouldering away today, making Silent Hill pretty much uninhabitable. Mom naturally loses daughter in the spooky environs of the people challenged township and quickly discovers that the pair have tripped the light fantastic into an alternative reality or something. With the help of a police officer, Cybil, Rose starts searching for her daughter in the gloomy streets, encountering all manner of creatures and religious fanatics along for the ride. Silent Hill has some deep dark secrets and Rose is about to get to the bottom of them. Ready to find out what lies below?
Review"Do not join the others, they are deceivers, they are damned." - Dahlia Gillespie.Another ring in review and the first half of our first event for 2010, "Radha-ical" a tribute to the much underrated Radha Mitchell. Okay so the movie is getting a review here at ScaryMinds due to Ms Mitchell starring and in all ways dominating proceedings. Mitchell is of course an Aussie Actress who has been kicking a few horror goals in recent times. You go girl! About the only other thing you need to know is I have never played any of the Silent Hill games and this review is simply art for art's sake, I'm reviewing a movie not the "film adaptation of a game". Let's head down to the coal face and dig up the black stuff. Director Gans simply opens his box of tricks up and goes all atmospheric with Silent Hill much to my appreciation and standing ovation. I simply hate horror movies that don't get the atmosphere happening and that are helmed by Directors simply after a few runs on the scoreboard on their collective way to making Rom-Coms for the great melting pot that is Boredwood. Gans notches things up and delivers one heck of a good looking movie that rivals anything Hammer Studios let loose on the mist shrouded moors. The vast majority of the film's running time is spent in the township of Silent Hill and Gans is all over it like a civic pride Mayor on crack cocaine, with so much attention to the environment that you figure he could have cleaned up an oil spill in Alaska and saved whole forests in the Pacific North West. We have a washout township, remember that burning underground coal, and a constant ash fall that would put most volcanic eruptions to shame. It's nearly always twilight in Silent Hill and the streets are shrouded in mist, delivering a very limited field of vision and subsequently the latest word in claustrophobia. I was running around my lounge room, naked, and whooping with joy when I got a look at Gans' vision here. A derelict mining town constantly dimmed by fog with ash falling from the sky, now how cool is that kids!
And just when you are settling in for this goodness Gans adds some raspberry topping to the sundae. When a siren sounds, explained later in the movie, darkness
falls without any preamble and creatures from the front porch of hell come out to play. If after a creature feature that goes the full zoological distance then
you are in the right place. We have these waifs that gradually succumb to internal fires, dudes tied to fences with barbed wire, giant roaches with human faces,
and a whole bunch more. Gans doles out his creature feature aspect on a slow rotator to ensure there's something new coming at you during the middle and final
blocks of the movie. Thanks Dude, really appreciated the creature designs and the gradually descent into Dante's fifth circle. About the only creature I wasn't
getting down and grooving with was this triangular headed one that wielded an improbably huge sword. I'll leave it to the Freudian trained to interpret what
was going down there folks, no comment.
There were of course a few issues shining through the fog bank as Silent Hill progressed to its shock, snigger, conclusion. Gans delivered some chills, but they were more of the wham bam thank you mam variety than based on building tension and tightening the screw. This isn't to say Gans was throwing frigging cats out of closets or having other jump seat moments, he can construct a well conceived scare sequence, but it appeared he had a number of these up his sleeve, sprinkled them throughout the movie, and forgot to add the binding between them. The Director manages to reconstitute in the final block, that's rocking around the clock, but the first couple of Acts pan out as more episodic in nature. While Rose and Cybil are battling creatures from the dark, trying to find Sharon, and gradually unlocking the thinly buried secrets, Rose's husband is trampling around the "real" world in a sort of unwanted sidenote. Sean Bean is completely underused in the role, and it really was simply a lazy way of providing the background details that the current action is enmeshed in. Couldn't our gals have come across newspaper articles and have minor characters providing the good oil? Oh wait they did! What was Sean Bean doing in this movie? As stated a couple of paragraphs above the final block of the movie brings home the bacon and had me jiggling my wobbly bits in appreciation. Just what till you get to the darkness falls on the staircase friends and neighbours, outstanding and worth the wait. We actually finally end up with a point of conflict rather than the ghost train ride on steroids we have been watching previous to the survivors making themselves known. Not going to add too much more here, the nurses down below rocked and Gans out does Clive Barker's Hellraiser (198.), as it would verge on the dirty world of spoilers (we don't have a code to cover that just yet). Just saying if you aren't digging the first couple of acts then hang in there as you will get some payback as the movie hits the after burners and drops some coolness on you. The final scene, a sort of epilogue if you like, didn't work for me and I actually groaned when the great unveil went down. No doubt the idea was to pave the way for a sequel, since that didn't happen we are left with an unsatisfactory conclusion to what could have been a great wrap up. Radha Mitchell (Rose) is spot on in her role, nails the mother's concern, the fear, the determination and had me onboard from scene one to the final statement of the movie. Sean Bean (Christopher) doesn't have a lot to do and is completely underused. Laurie Holden (Cybil) does what she has to do but for mine was wrongly cast in the tough cop role. Jodelle Ferland (Sharon/Alessa) works like a wild thing and delivers a pretty sensational performance in the two, or is that three, roles she is called upon to nail. Jeff Danna and Akira Yamaoka delivered on the score that ranged through the emotions and underlined the almost gothic nature of Gans' vision. There's a slight hint of grandeur to the arrangement offset by some almost "B" grade work in the final scene. Apparently, or so I'm informed, a bunch of sound effects and music from the games is in use. Summary ExecutionI was pleasantly surprised with Silent Hill as I had expected a much worse movie given it's a video game adaptation. Radha, as usual, is on form, Gans has his horror on, and visually I was left humping the movie's leg. I found some slight lagging in pace during the first couple of Acts but was caught up and rung out by the final block that ultimately won me over to the movie's finer points.Silent Hill marks part one of our two part Radha-ical tribute with our second part, Pitch Black, coming real soon. For no apparent reason ScaryMinds has decide to go into Radha Mitchell mode, had a feeling it might be due to a new movie featuring the Aussie Actress being released shortly but can't locate said movie, and have to say I'm reasonably happy with the development. Australia has been producing some notable "scream queens just lately", Naomi Watts and Melissa George spring immediately to mind, Radha Mitchell can proudly take her place in the parade. If you haven't seen the movie, due no doubt to some bad reviews, then I would suggest you immediately go out and hunt it down. While Silent Hill isn't likely to be everyone's cup of darkness there is no denying that Director Gans had infused the film with a distinctive look and feel. I was pleased I took a trip to the Hill, check it out yourself and silence the naysayers.
ScaryMinds Rates this movie as ... Gans almost delivers a classic but falters in the delivery stride.
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