Silent Hill

The eerie and deserted ghost town of Silent Hill draws a young mother desperate to find a cure for her only child's illness. Unable to accept the doctor's diagnosis that her daughter should be permanently institutionalized for psychiatric care, Rose flees with her child, heading for the abandoned town in search of answers--and ignoring the protests of her husband.

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There are different types of fear. There is the fear of the knife-wielding killer that you KNOW is out there somewhere. Then there is the fear of the unknown. The fear that SOMETHING is out there, but you really don't know what. The fear that you will walk around the next corner and see something you didn't expect. The first type of fear is much easier to manage. The second type of fear, the fear of the unknown is so psychologically taxing that you wonder how much more you can actually take. This movie perfectly harnesses the psychological fear. Every time you hear the siren in Silent Hill you wonder what you will possible see come out of the mist this time.

The directing in this movie provides an atmosphere that grips you from the very beginning and doesn't let you go throughout the entire movie. Silent Hill is a place where nightmares come to life and there is no relief of any kind. I really liked Radha Mitchell in this film as Rose (the mother of the little girl). I have enjoyed her in other movies such as Man on Fire but her fear and dread was so well done in this movie that it draws you in. I've already heard mumblings about how Sean Bean's character as Rose's husband and Sharon's father, Christopher, was unnecessary for this plot but I disagree. Silent Hill would not have been as surreal without the contrast between what Christopher was going through searching for Rose and what she was going through trying to find her daughter. Jodelle Ferland, however, is the outstanding performance in this film as the little girl Sharon.

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Unless you desire for your children to have nightmares for years, don't take them to this movie. Language is here and there, but the extreme violence and horrifying creatures that inhabit Silent Hill is what makes the R-rating well deserved. This is not a film for the faint of heart or weak-stomached. Graphic portrayal of a person being burned alive, showing the skin being ripped off of a person and people being ripped apart by barbed wire, among other things is what you can expect from this movie.

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Silent Hill completely succeeds in being what it has set out to be. Silent Hill is a story that is terrifying on a level that goes beyond ghosts or demons. All the evil in Silent Hill is there because of what people did to a child. What is really more terrifying? Is it the demons and evil that torment or is the things people did that caused that evil to be there in the first place? Silent Hill will cause you to think about that question and others for days after you see this movie.

4.5 out of 5