First off - if you have never played any Silent Hill games, and you wanna be scared poopless, get SH3 (warning- rated M for a reason). The game gives you enough backstory for it to make sense w/o having played 1. I hear they are re-releasing 1 with a female protagonist to coincide with the movie, which should help those who have not been able to find the old PS1 game.
Okay - on with the review. I tried not to have any spoilers, but just to be safe, don't read if you don't want to know anything about the movie, okay?
Sharon, a little girl prone to seizures in which she chokes out the words "Silent Hill", is taken by her mother to said ghost town against the wishes of her father. After they literally crash into town (a very finely executed scene), Sharon disappears, and her mother Rose sets off in search of her.
If you have played any of the games, be ready for the first hour to experience true heady bliss. The cinematography is superb - you feel as if you are playing the game on the big screen. There are some minor plot malfunctions, but the visuals make up for it, and you truly do want to keep watching (the cop, Cybil, is great fun.)
However, things start to falter in hour two, when it seems as if the script is missing about 30 pages. This gap is filled by a convoluted flashback / narrative sequence which serves to confuse newcomers and alienate those familiar with the story. Not that the movie makers shouldn't have taken liberties with the plot to make it more manageable in a cinematic sense, but the way that they determined to change it does not necessarily make it any better a story.
To me, the special effects were more hits than misses - some were wonderful. The blade scenes of Pyramidhead brought cheers from the theater filled with obvious fans. But another scene looked rubbery and fake (most of the effects were computer generated). The climax was interesting enough but the movie then stumbles to what I felt was a predictable and unsatisfying ending.
My rating? B-
Next up - Fatal Frame the Movie???
