Movie versions of videogames are usually shoot-’em-ups, like Doom, but the dark, ethereal spookiness of the PlayStation hit Silent Hill is the inspiration for this 2006 adaptation.
Jodelle Ferland (recently seen in Terry Gilliam’s Tideland) plays Sharon, a little girl haunted by dark dreams, often sleepwalking across dangerous roads. Sharon then discovers that the place in her dreams, Silent Hill, is a real town. She persuades her mum Rose (Pitch Black star Radha Mitchell) to drive her there, against the wishes of Sharon’s dad (Lord of the Rings star Sean Bean).
After a car crash en route, Rose blacks out and wakes to find that her daughter has vanished, and she must venture into the hellish, ash-covered and apparently desolate old mining town of Silent Hill to get her back.
Written by Pulp Fiction scribe Roger Avary and directed by French genre specialist Christophe Gans (who made the sumptuous Brotherhood of the Wolf), this lengthy movie appears to have captured the right kind of atmospheric visual style – and it should look suitably unsettling in HD – but the film got a big thumbs down from critics for its muddled plot and hokey dialogue.
Related story: There’s more hard-hitting HD horror this month in Hostel.
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