I finally went to see the movie with a friend. As a fan of the Silent Hill games, I couldn’t not go watch the movie, so here is my review, there are a few spoilers here and there so you’re warned:

The Good:

– the atmosphere of the movie was good and with the music and the graininess
– the effects were good as well
– the places that we see ingame were well done as well, really felt Silent Hillish
– the blood and gore were nice, but I do agree Cybil being showed being burned was too much, just showing her dead body would have done the same
– Pyramid head!!! Damn he is impressive. I guess I was too scared and too busy to run away from him to notice how tall and impressive he can be. And that long knife was helping a lot
– the credit and the music from SH 3 were good, we actually stayed to watch and listen, now she told me she (my friend) liked the music very much
– the mobs were well done and freaky, the part where the nurses start slashing each other, I wasn’t expecting that, I jumped

The Bad:

– too many mobs at once and then nothing for a while, kind of killed the scary element
– the parallel story at the other town with the father, trying to explain Silent Hill and as well to show that his wife and him aren’t in the same world
– I have always loved to think that it was snow in SH that was falling but here telling exactly what it is kind of killed the mystery
– it felt a bit rushed, so much time was spent at the beginning to set the story and then the rest was a bit quick for me

The Ugly

– everything is rather fine up until they reach the church, that is so not in the story, and while they were all alone before now they’re surrounded by people which kills the scare
– while the effects were rather good, the actors’ makeup were really bad, the worse being Daliah, it was so bad it was scary in a bad way.
– the explanations at the end, rather silly and unnecessary
– what happened to Lisa? Alessa cared and loved her so much, I doubt she would have done this, and it would have been great showing the scene when Lisa comes back from the dead to drag Dr. Kauffman to Hell
– the story, what is up with this? By the way, they do show a painting with God written on it but representing a woman, isn’t that in the first game? Here is an element that could have been used if they would have made the real story
– they show the town to be abandoned and inhabited when we know in Silent Hill 2, 3 and 4 that the town is still there and there are still people living there. Sure the town went through a lot but it’s not abandoned like in the movie.

Scare factor:

While my friend told me she was really scared and that she liked the movie, she even plans to buy the DVD, I was disappointed in the scare part in the sense that I didn’t get scared as much as I wished during the movie, there were too many elements breaking the rhythm.

Overall, I think the look of the movie was great while the content was lacking.

This is a past blog entry from MySpace.