Silent Hill (2006)
Directed by Christophe Gans
Rose, a desperate mother, takes her adopted daughter, Sharon, to the town of Silent Hill in an attempt to cure her of her ailment. After a violent car crash, Sharon disappears, and Rose embarks on a horrific journey to get her back and begins to uncover the truth behind the apocalyptic disaster that burned the town 30 years earlier.
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Sharon quickly goes missing in the fog-forsaken place (under which the fires that devastated the town still burn) and Rose spends the better part of the movie's 127 minutes pursuing an elusive child-like figure (clearly she never saw "Don't Look Now") before figuring it all out.
Christophe Gans’ depiction of the “Silent Hill” video game is really above dreck like “Doom” and “Resident Evil”.
Though the cinematography by Dan Laustsen and the production design by Carol Spier feel like something out of the Nine Inch Nails video library, "Silent Hill" is no better or worse than "Doom", "Resident Evil" or the rest of their ilk.
Although it's based on a video game, you can't really compare it to something like "Resident Evil" or "Doom" because it's not an action movie based on an action-driven game, as much as being a horror movie.
…as she shifts gears from the Silent Hill survival horror of last episode to a more dramatic and wistful war movie aesthetic…
And Alice Krige (who was scary in both "Ghost Story" and "Star Trek: First Contact") can't even muster enough energy to appear sinister here.
It's not the talented Mitchell's fault -- even the finest actress couldn't possibly rise above this material -- but others, in particular Alice Krige ("Star Trek: First Contact") as the town's high priestess, really embarrass themselves.
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Freely exhibiting thematic and visual similarities with "Rosemary's Baby," "The Wicker Man" and "Carrie," "Silent Hill" presents a mishmash of ideas that never quite connect.
(Aside from The Shining , it's the longest horror movie I can think of.)
Her character veers more towards the creepy fun of Chase's Samara in "The Ring" than other creepy little girls from horror movies, and she does a decent job with what is essentially a dual role.
It makes them a bit odd, not necessarily in a good way, because they look like something out of Dave McKean's "MirrorMask."
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A mother, Rose Da Silva (Radha Mitchell, Melinda and Melinda), takes her troubled, adopted daughter, Sharon (Jodelle Ferland, Tideland), to the ghost town of Silent Hill, W.Va., thinking that there she may find the key to her daughter's problems, since whenever Sharon has one of her episodes (which always seem to end with the child sleepwalking to the edge of dangerous cliffs) she mentions Silent Hill.
After playing Radha Mitchell's daughter in the similarly awful "Silent Hill" , this young actress is in for some extensive time on the therapist's couch when she grows up.
Crashing and burning with brazen, headstrong recklessness, the former Pythonite's latest (adapted from Mitch Cullin's novel) is a gonzo riff on Alice in Wonderland drowning in drug abuse, talking squirrels, rotting corpses, pedophilia, and decapitated doll heads which are worn on the fingers of—and imaginatively engaged in conversation by—young Jeliza-Rose ( Silent Hill 's Jodelle Ferland).
Nods to Japanese horror movies aboundâcreepy undead schoolgirls, bent-limbed bogeymen, wronged spirits bent on revengeâand director Christophe Gansâ (from the equally incoherent but infinitely more entertaining Brotherhood of the Wolf) visual style and production design goes a long way in making up for the deficiencies of Roger Avaryâs script, but this is still Hellraiser Lite.
Written by Tarantino associate Roger Avary and directed by Christophe Gans (of the admirably over-the-top cult hit "Brotherhood of the Wolf"), "Silent Hill" has a pedigree better than most game adaptations, and I jotted in my notes that it starts off with an air of respectability, even legitimacy.
He’s no Uwe Boll, but French director Christophe Gans (“Brotherhood of the Wolf”) has certainly fallen to the same level with his adaptation of the popular survival-horror video game, “Silent Hill.”
Either the film was downright junk, or just a bit too weird (in some of the same ways as Gans' prior effort, Brotherhood of the Wolf).
Director Christophe Gans ("Brotherhood of the Wolf") and his fellow screenwriters have also concocted a dual story line in which Rose's husband (Sean Bean) tries to convince local police authorities to help him search for his missing wife and daughter.
It comes as no surprise that the film was directed by the French filmmaker Christophe Gans, whose similarly good-looking but disappointing "Brotherhood of the Wolf" was the highest grossing French film ever and was, like "Hill", also too long for its own good.