Silent Hill

I love horror movies. If I had to pick a genre to be the only one I was allowed to watch for the rest of my life, I’d pretty much have to go with this one. Now, there are two categories of horror movies for me: the ones that are good and are supposed to be taken seriously and the ones that are slopped together for the very reason that there are people like me who will go see pretty much all of them. Ones I would place in the quality horror movie category are things like the remakes of Dawn of the Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Hills Have Eyes. (I’m going to leave the older, classic horror films out of this – I apply these categories to the new ones.) Crap category? Pretty much anything that has to tout “From the producer of [fill in the name of a horror movie that was actually good here],” with the ability to put Michael Bay’s name here the notable exception. A recent example: the remake of The Fog. Also in this category goes most sequels and anything rated PG-13 unless it’s a remake of a Japanese horror film, though those are still better when they are rated R.

I’m usually pretty good at figuring out which horror movies belong in which category before I actually watch them. There are a few that I originally expect to place in the latter category, and that really, if I’m being honest, belong there, but that I still enjoy (like House on Haunted Hill or 13 Ghosts, for instance – belong in that category, but I still enjoyed them a lot and own them on DVD).

But my purpose here is to review Silent Hill. The purpose of that long preface was to say that this one was one of the rare ones that was sort of a question mark for me. The previews looked promising, but I had this nagging suspicion that the parts we were getting to see in the preview were the only good parts in the movie. I was still psyched about getting to see it, but I had myself braced for disappointment. But disappointed I was not. I don’t think I’ll ever go around saying this is the best horror movie ever, but it was good.

I don’t play the video games, so I’m not sure how the plots compare, but the movie plot goes like this: a couple has adopted a girl named Sharon, Sharon is creepy and sleepwalks and talks about a place called Silent Hill while she does so. Apparently there are other problems, too; there are references to medications she’s supposed to be taking and how they are no longer working. Mom thinks that the best way to solve it is to find Silent Hill and take Sharon there. And naturally, this is a big mistake. Silent Hill is a ghost town in West Virginia that was burned up by a fire about 30 years earlier, and the fire apparently continues to burn in the coal mines beneath the city. A car accident leaves mom and Sharon and a policewoman on the outskirts of town, Sharon has disappeared into the town, and huge chasms have opened up on all the roads leading away from town.

What you soon find out is that in this town, every few hours a siren sounds and then The Darkness comes and the place turns into what is essentially Hell, with horrid creatures trying to do the characters harm at every turn. And a lot of these things are DANG CREEPY!!! This is where I’ll begin with the opinion portion of this review. There were some stunning visual moments in this movie. One of the things that creeps me out most in horror movies is the weird motion thing (one of the reasons that House on Haunted Hill works for me, actually), and this movie has weird motion galore. There are at least five different types of these creatures, all distinctively different. One of my concerns was that they had already shown all the moments like this in the preview and that no surprises remained. I was totally wrong about that one – there were tons of great moments along these lines, and even more of those “Oh, holy crap, PLEASE don’t show me what that thing looks like… CRAP!” kinds of moments.

The plot was fine. I can’t really complain about it, but I also have to say I was kind of disinterested in it. It was fine, it made sense by the end, but the visual creepiness was way more important, and the storyline never managed to be quite as captivating as the rest of the elements of the film.

And The Ring’s David Dorfman is going to have to give up his Creepiest Kid In A Movie title to the little girl from this one. I wasn’t all that impressed by her at the beginning of the movie, but as it goes on and there are about three different parts for her to play, not only is she demonstrating a wide range of ability, but playing this totally evil entity as one of them. Example: a woman is wrapped tightly in barbed wire and suspended above a church floor. The girl looks up and sees this and starts to skip around in a circle in celebration. That’s going to be the thing I think of first when I remember this movie, I believe.

I don’t know how fans of the game might respond to this movie, but as someone coming in just wanting a well-made horror movie, I was satisfied and have no qualms about recommending it.