Silent Hill

Alternate titles : Terror on Silent Hill.

Tagline : "We've been expecting you."

Ever since "Resident Evil" came out, a string of video game based horror films were quick to follow, most of which where pretty terrible. This one however, based on the popular Konami video game of the same name, did at least prove to be half decent.

Rose DeSilva (Rhada Mitchell) and her husband Christopher (Sean Bean) have adopted a young girl named Sharon. Prone to bouts of sleepwalking, they become extremely concerned, when she starts suffering from extreme nightmares about a place called Silent Hill. Discovering that Silent Hill is an actual ghost town in West Virginia, Rose decides to ignore her husband's warnings and take their daughter there, to see if they can discover what it is that's drawing her to the place.

The town has been abandoned for several decades, after a fire in a coal mine, which is still raging underground, has rendered the place uninhabitable. But as she attempts to enter the old town, she is pursued by a motorcycle cop and ends up crashing. When Rose and the police officer, Cybil Holden (Laurie Holden) come to, they find the town looks quite different to how it did prior to the accident. Sharon is missing and strange creatures appear to be lurking in the smog filled streets.

Meanwhile, Rose's husband is searching for them with the local police. But strangely, they are unable to find any trace of them, or the missing motorcycle officer anywhere in the town. It's almost as if they're inhabiting 2 separate worlds. But with Sharon still missing and these strange creatures in Rose and Officer Holden's version of the town proving to be less than friendly, they find that Silent Hill is a ghost town in a very real sense of the word...

Viewed as a straight horror film, you might find some of the strange creatures and plot elements in this a bit bizarre, but if you're familiar with the video game, you should get all the references. Though you don't need to have played the game to be able to enjoy this and viewed on its own merits, proves to be an entertaining enough supernatural, survival horror.

Overall Marks : 5.5/10.

Terrifying Trivia

• The town of Silent Hill was based on Centralia, Pennsylvania, which is a modern day ghost town, abandoned because of a fire raging underground in one of the coal mines, which has rendered the place virtually uninhabitable.
• Most of the extras playing the zombies were dancers, who they hired because they were flexible enough to perform the strange movements required.
• The film's budget was $50,000,000.
• Kim Coates, who played Officer Gucci, also appeared in "Resident Evil : Afterlife".
• The films soundtrack was comprised almost entirely of music from the video games, including the end theme song by Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, which was originally used in the "Silent Hill 3" game. The only non-game music included was the song "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash.
• The name of the college building, "Midwich", was a nod to the film "Village of the Damned", which takes place in a fictional town named Midwich.
• Throughout the film Rose's costume becomes progressively greyer, then eventually blood red. But the progressive changes in colour are so slight over the course of the film you don't really notice it. This involved the use of over 100 costumes each one a slightly different shade from the last.
• The original version of the script contained an all female cast, but the studios insisted they add additional male leads. So Sean Bean was added as Rose's husband and Officer Gucci was changed to a male character.
• Director Christopher Gans had been trying to get the rights to make the film for over 5 years. He eventually managed to convince games publisher Konami to let him do it after sending them a personal video saying how much he loved the games, together with some scenes he'd filmed himself, set to some of the music from the game.

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