Director: Christophe Gans
Year: 2006
Country: Canada/France/Japan/USA
Alternate Titles: Centralia
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Taking a trip together, a woman and her daughter trying to see if they can help cure her illness are involved in an accident outside the town of Silent Hill, once she finds a small group of survivors inside the town helps fight off the creatures lurking in the shadows to save her daughter.
Review:
This here does have some great parts to it. One of the better features here is that the film is filled with completely outlandish and unearthly creatures. One character is attacked by a horde of gray-skinned mutant children with glowing orange wounds on their skin that look as though they are burning inside. Two more are approached by a bizarre, gray character with no face or arms and moves as though its bones are misshapen and spews acidic ash when wounded, while another creation crawls on its stomach with its feet bound up in an arch over its back whose blood causes veins to start creeping through the walls. As well, the most fondly-remembered beings here is the gargantuan being that towers over everyone that has a metal gate over it's face and brandishes a massive scythe while being accompanied by deformed mutated nurses score massively here and makes for a genuinely creepy assortment of creatures living in the town.
Also, it is rather enjoyable that these creatures come alive since they are shot brilliantly. The many unsettling images photographed here are simply beautifully shot and create a considerably creepy, foreboding atmosphere. Instead of having the fog machines on all the time, they created just the kind of blurry white light that shines through after a big fire has settled due to the ashes in the air. The ruined-town aesthetic is recreated quite beautifully. The town goes from nominal daylight that is heavily obscured by a fog of falling ash to periodic darkness where everything changes. The already-eerie dilapidated school hallways become corroded metal corridors in an unidentifiable industrial plant, and they return to normal when the darkness recedes. This atmospheric creation is highly immersive and works nicely here due to having a unique and creative location within which the imposing creatures can thrive, as well as setting the stage for some impressive gore scenes that are quite impressively rendered.
Also rather enjoyable here are the highly-energetic action scenes throughout. There are plenty of quite jolting scenes in here; the highlight is a marvelously creepy scene where one character must try and squeeze their way through a corridor full of mutant nurses. After ending up alone in the dark and creepy bowels of an old hospital, the heroine heads for her destination but then encounters a group of grossly disfigured nurse-type figures with massive holes in what's left of their heads and move in a herky-jerky fashion toward her. When she realizes they're drawn to and seemingly activated by her flashlight, she turns it off, and they mostly go motionless. She then slowly and cautiously must walk through them in the hallway, with most frozen and holding scalpels, but some slightly leaning in as if trying to sniff her. After one becomes agitated and twitches, it then lashes out, missing her but slicing the throat of another, and this causes all of them to lash out and strike each other, with her barely avoiding being cut. Another scene with a creature trapping two in a small room with a super-long blade, followed by a large swarm of flesh-eating beetles. The close calls and the need to stay out of the blade's way as they try to get away from the beetles is quite thrilling and makes for some great scenes.
The cast here is quite good, especially considering the talent involved. Radha Mitchell is incredibly impressive as Rose, with her being the typical concerned mother looking for her daughter and then stumbling across the weird happenings in the town, which really brings us onto her side. We're just as lost in this crazy town. She has a pretty similar expression in the first half for the most part, but that changes nicely in the finale, where the maternal instincts come across pretty well. Laurie Holden as Officer Cybil is pretty much the no-nonsense police officer trying to do her job and just gets caught up in the madness manages to be almost equal to the voice-of-reason in the story where she tries to keep her training about her in the situation. Jodelle Ferland, as the two girls Sharon and Alessia, offers a fine balance between sympathetic and creepy, depending on which one she's playing at the time, and is a fine performer in her time on-screen. There's also Alice Kriege as the psychotic priestess Christabella, who is in charge of the purity cult, Deborah Kara Unger as the outcasted mother who has to live with the guilt of her original agreement, and Sean Bean in what amounts to a thankless role as the father looking for everyone. This here did have some good points overall.
There were many problems with the film. One of the problems is that this might be confusing to people who aren't familiar with the game. Most things are left unexplained, and there were times that any sort of explanation would've been better than what was offered. Not saying anything about what is going on with practically anything in the town at all, which is a complete mystery, and there's no back-story given for anything or anyone. It introduces elements about the town's sordid history about the previous burning that destroyed it long before it was abandoned the second time and brings up the first group that played around with the witch burning that tormented the original villagers but then never says anything about their connection to each other. There's nothing about the forces keeping the creatures trapped in the town to begin with or what their specific purposes are about, as this is really hard to understand without being familiar with the game, and it hurts the film. The incredibly confusing ending is one of its biggest flaws, as it's so completely confusing and hard to understand that its inclusion leads to no answers.
Also quite damaging is the film's over-extended running time. This is mostly conveyed with the husband's useless, bloated scenes running around after her, including checking up on his work, following up on clues about the disappearance with the police officers, and how the effects of the case are getting to him. These end up adding nothing to the movie but information, which is given to us in the journey anyway. Other scenes here include the incredibly banal scenes of the purity cult and their interactions within in the church that not only doesn't make any sense why they would attack the way they do but gives us an extended flashback to their original cleansing attempt that doesn't seem to make it clear if that was what affected the towns' history or whether that was to make it known what had happened to the little girl since none of this is known despite being as long as it is. This is a movie that could benefit greatly by having about twenty or thirty minutes cut out of it, and it wouldn't be too surprising if that would've made the film any different. They have no effect on the outcome of the happening at all, and its inclusion, along with the different plot holes and confusion, really lower this one highly.
Overview: ***/5
This is a severely overrated film that really only offers a couple of moments of worthiness and a long series of disappointing elements about it. It's got a lot of good feedback, so if it sounds interesting or the positives are appealing give it a shot, but it's really not as special as it's been given considering all the major flaws featured here.
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