I saw Silent Hill last weekend. The short of it; I liked it. This is based off a single viewing and not expecting anything from the thing.
I’m not sure what I was expecting. I knew that the french director Christophe Gans had his hands on it. Gans is the guy who directed Brotherhood of the Wolf. One of the few decent werewolf movies, in my humble opinion. I was unsure on Silent Hill cause Hollywood and video games never, ever mix. Every single time The Big Movie People(tm) take a stab at translating the video gaming market to film, it’s like a tornado in a trailer park. Separately, you know what each one is, but when the two meet, something horrible and indiscernible remains.
The sky was clear and blue. The sun wasn’t out to burn everything to cinders. And for whatever reason, I decided Saturday was good day for a movie. I called up Dunc and we journeyed to the Hollywood 18 to see the latest disaster waiting to happen.
What did I find instead? A damn beautifully shot film. I’m telling you, Gans has an extraordinary eye for making films look like Rembrandts in motion.
That’s not to say that there weren’t points in the flick that freaked my noise. Cause there were. And I’m not one who is disturbed by freaky things on film. Gans managed to keep the amorphous critters that haunted Silent Hill slightly obscured, even when they’re in plain sight. Everyone knows that’s where the trick with creature F/X lies; it’s what you don’t see that makes everything a little creepy.
Silent Hill had the feeling of the cut scenes between game play. Usually the best parts of any game you’re playing. Luckily it worked in the movie, too.
The only issue I had with it was sizable bits of the end were weighted with exposition. A lot of the whys and wherefores of what was happening were left out in the beginning. So everything else we needed to know fell like a lead weight on the third act.
The movie worked for me. It’s not gonna win any Oscars, but it kept me entertained. It’s the sort of scary tale you might tell on rainy nights when the power’s out.
It didn’t hurt that Radha Mitchell(Pitch Black, Man on Fire) is very easy on my eyes and that all my lady cop in tight leather pants fantasies were filled with the new-to-me actress Lauren Holden.
