Stars: Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Tanya Allen, Kim Coates, Alice Krige, Deborah Kara Unger, Laurie Holden

Director: Christophe Gans

Summary: Rose Da Silva takes her adopted daughter Sharon to the West Virginia mining town Silent Hill in attempt to discover why the place haunts her child's dreams. Once there, they find that the place is a hellacious ghost town.

Rose Da Silva is a young mother whose adopted daughter Sharon speaks of the West Virginia mining town of Silent Hill as she sleepwalks. Rose decides to take Sharon there in an attempt to discover why it haunts her dreams but Silent Hill has been a ghost town since a series of underground coal fires in 1974, and the residents who stayed behind are the stuff of nightmares. It's always been said that a video game cannot be successfully adapted into a film. With SILENT HILL, director Christophe Gans (BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF) and screenwriter Roger Avary (KILLING ZOE) have the benefit of the atmospheric and often terrifying game series of the same name. With a budget reportedly in excess of $50 million, they wisely eschew dense plot in favour of a kaleidoscopic nightmare--culled from several volumes of the game series--designed to give horror fans what they crave. SILENT HILL is notable for having a largely female cast (the male characters were reportedly added at the studio's behest), with Radha Mitchell (PITCH BLACK), Deborah Kara Unger, Alice Krige, and Laurie Holden in the principal roles. But the film's real star is production designer Carol Spier (known for her frequent work with David Cronenberg), whose work makes the deserted town into a true vision of hell. Utilizing an effective combination of CGI and latex makeup effects, several of the creatures on display may upset more sensitive viewers, as will some of the carnage. On the other hand, seasoned horror fans and gamers who have been waiting to see a joystick-free version of SILENT HILL are likely to come away feeling like they've just taken a nightmare vacation to the spookiest town in America.

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A lot of movies can be described as "dripping with atmosphere," but in the case of Silent Hill it's literally true. Faithfully adapted from the Konami video games by French director Christophe Gans and Pulp Fiction cowriter Roger Avary (both self-confessed video game addicts), this dark and grisly horror-fest is nothing if not a triumph of cinematography and production design, consisting of a minimal and mostly incoherent plot propped up by a mysterious maze of sets that literally seep, drip, and ooze with the atmospheric evil of past misdeeds. Welcome to the abandoned and perpetually foggy ghost town of Silent Hill, where grey ash falls like snow, a devastating coal-mine fire still burns in a hellish underground, and demons of various shapes and sizes make your worst nightmares seem like a walk in the park. It's here that distressed mother Rose (played by Pitch Black heroine Radha Mitchell) has taken her daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) in hopes of discovering the source of Sharon's sleepwalking nightmares. What they find instead is a burned-out legacy of unspeakable evil, as Silent Hill's dark secrets are revealed. As opposing denizens of Silent Hill's meta-morphing underworld, Canadian actresses Alice Krige and Deborah Kara Unger seem to be the only ones who recognize this morbid mess as campy comedy; Gans (who established his visual flair with The Brotherhood of the Wolf) and Avary take it far too seriously, and the entire movie is utterly devoid of any emotional hooks or plot logic that would make us care about anything that happens. In crafting a loyal big-screen rendition of Silent Hill and its Playstation sequels, they've forgotten that movies play by a different and more demanding set of rules. As a result, they've made an impressive-looking but ultimately hollow horror film that only Silent Hill game-players can truly appreciate. --Jeff Shannon

Aspect Ratio:	2.35 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Making of Featurette,, Silent Hill Origins,, Building Silent Hill,, Stars and Stunts,, Creatures Unleashed,, Creature Choreography
Year:	2006
Release Date:	September 4, 2006
Runtime:	130 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	P 919901000
Keywords:	Hill, General, Silent, Horror, Occult
Genre:	Horror/Occult