Silent Hill (2006)
Average Rating: 4.5/10
Reviews Counted: 89
Fresh: 26 | Rotten: 63
Silent Hill is visually impressive, but as with many video game adaptations, it's plagued by inane dialogue, a muddled plot, and an overlong runtime.
Average Rating: 3/10
Critic Reviews: 17
Fresh: 0 | Rotten: 17
Silent Hill is visually impressive, but as with many video game adaptations, it's plagued by inane dialogue, a muddled plot, and an overlong runtime.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.2/5
User Ratings: 340,645
My Rating
Movie Info
A mother and daughter flee to a strange abandoned town to seek out answers to the daughter's nightly psychological turmoil in Brotherhood of the Wolf director Christophe Gans' adaptation of the popular survival horror video game. Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) is a very sick child, yet rather than seeing her child suffer the cruel indignities of the medical profession, Rose (Radha Mitchell) ignores her husband's (Sean Bean) pleas and absconds with her ailing daughter to the fog-enshrouded town of
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Cast
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Radha Mitchell
Rose Da Silva -
Sean Bean
Christopher Da Silva -
Laurie Holden
Cybil Bennett -
Deborah Kara Unger
Dahlia Gillespie -
Kim Coates
Officer Thomas Gucci -
Tanya Allen
Anna -
Alice Krige
Christabella -
Jodelle Ferland
Alessa, Sharon -
Colleen Williams
Archivist -
Ron Gabriel
Old Mechanic -
Eve Crawford
Sister Margaret -
Derek Ritschel
Young Police Officer -
Amanda Hiebert
Gas Attendant -
Nicky Guadagni
Distressed Woman -
Maxine Dumont
Christabella's Aide -
Christopher Britton
Adam -
Stephen R. Hart
Elder -
Simon Richards
Elder -
Ian White
Elder -
Elizabeth Harpur
Congregation -
Janet Land
Congregation -
Florence MacGregor
Congregation -
Lynn Woodman
Congregation -
Hannah Fleming
School Girl -
Holly Makarchuk
School Girl -
Tatiana Haas
School Girl -
Roberto Campanella
Colin, Janitor, Red Pyr... -
Mike Cota
Armless Man -
Yvonne Yuen Nan Ng
Grey Child -
Lorry Ayers
Scarred Older Alessa -
Emily Lineham
Dark Nurse, Red Nurse -
Donna Milburn
Slashing Dark Nurse -
Nadia Barosso
Dark Nurse -
Noelle Boggio
Dark Nurse -
Victoria Boland
Dark Nurse -
Rhoslynne Bugay
Dark Nurse -
Alicia Bundy
Dark Nurse -
Carrie Clayton
Dark Nurse -
Rachel Crowther
Dark Nurse -
Zsuzzana Cseh
Dark Nurse -
Judit Kovacs
Dark Nurse -
Stephanie Lauder
Dark Nurse -
Chantelle Leonardo
Dark Nurse -
Onika Ndukwe
Dark Nurse -
Katherine Olsen
Dark Nurse -
Melissa Panton
Dark Nurse -
Sylwia Pluta
Dark Nurse -
Lisa Shaw
Dark Nurse -
Tamara Smeaton
Dark Nurse -
Nicole Ann St. Hill
Dark Nurse
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Silent Hill Trailer & Photos
All Critics (90) | Top Critics (17) | Fresh (31) | Rotten (66) | DVD (25)
French director Christophe Gans's adaptation of the Silent Hill computer game is visually inspired and thematically ambitious, yet ultimately uninvolving.
Stuffed with cheap effects and devoid of tension, this French-Japanese-U.S. co-production contributes exactly zilch to the rich film history of those three nations.
Silent Hill is mostly paralyzing in its vagueness.
Structured around a series of blackouts and gross-outs, Silent Hill is one long free fall through icky surrealism and underlighted nightmares.
A great-looking but stupefyingly incoherent supernatural thriller,
Though Silent Hill's shoddy dialogue and incoherent story constantly irritate, several sights and scenes possess a certain surreal grandeur.
Visually arresting but only sporadically enthralling.
I wouldn't rush to see it again, but I would definitely recommend it...
Grim horror film about missing girl. Not for kids.
Whilst not as atrocious as some other films that have opened this year, the truely woeful story and quality of Silent is saved only by its occasion moments of visual flair, and its all over effective creepy atmosphere.
When everything starts being explained, the mystery evaporates and the world of the game loses its eerie bafflement.
The latest, most ambitious and perhaps least comprehensible video game adaptation in recent memory.
... the movie's strongest assets are its visuals.
If you like your nightmares served upfront without the clutter of dramatic structure, then Silent Hill should be your next stop.
although it is rarely if ever jump-out-of-your-seat scary, Silent Hill is an unremittingly creepy municipality of the mind where motherhood, mystery and madness have come home to stay.
Silent Hill starts out at point A and then goes so quickly, loudly and visually over-the-top that it flies completely off the rails into its own glorious weirdness.
A step in the right direction for console-to-screen transitions and a twisted masterpiece of set design.
Silent Hill is one big mish-mash that doesn't make sense, doesn't come together, and doesn't scare you. Its only hope is to become so bad over time that it will eventually join the ranks of campy horror classics.
Director Christophe Gans charges, hell-bent, right over the plot and winds up with not much more than an oppressive 125-minute running time.
More deadly than silent.
Over long with a muddled story and a gaggle of wasted talent, Silent Hill is a spectacular misfire.
As a fluke, I took my mom (also named Rose) to the screening. She doesn't like SF or horror and doesn't even know what a video game is, yet she ended up really liking it! How weird is that?
Audience Reviews for Silent Hill
Super Reviewer
That is the first thing you notice straight away, this film is an actual horror film and tries to recreate the tension from the eerie game. The visuals in this film are actually pretty good and the whole thing certainly does feel like a videogame in the sense of camera angles, lighting and general atmosphere.
I must admit to being very impressed with the whole look of the film. Its not watered down in any way, there's plenty of blood, the monsters are highly detailed and very creepy (Pyramid Head looking damn good I must say), the town is rendered really well, it chilling, very dark and brings the game to life in a truly surprising way. A cheap run of the mill straight to DVD film this is not...amazingly.
The plot is slightly disappointing in the sense that it kinda wanders. At first the film is a solid ghost story with demons, intrigue and imagery that you may see in many Japanese horrors ('The Ring' for one with all the little girl shots). Unfortunately later the story seems to gravitate towards more of a religious theme including cults and witch hunting which is a completely different horror genre really. That's not what you expect and it weakens the film as all the demons, monsters and mutilated bodies all turn out to be just incarnations from a young child's mind (I think).
The whole 'person getting revenge by using his/her anger manifested in monsters/creatures' isn't too original really but I do believe this feeds into the videogames story, or at least various ideas from all the games. The film isn't short on bad bits though, can't escape that I'm afraid. Casting Sean Bean as an American was not the best idea really, his attempt is brave but heavily flawed. The odd silly moment including when 'Rose' heads off down into the hospitals basement, the lift seems to drop about a hundred levels! how deep does this building go!?.
The other main issue I had was the rather weak ending, a big anti climax really with a tame CGI finale. Not scary and not particularly interesting because you don't feel the bad guys are getting a good drumming. I also didn't get the finale twist at the end where 'Rose' and 'Sharon' seem to have remained in this alternative realm or dimension? how and why?? are they maybe dead? what gives here?.
You must give kudos to Gans for what he has accomplished here. Who'd have thought an adaptation of a horror videogame, which isn't exactly too far from the 'Capcom' equivalent, would actually turn out to be a stable accurate conversion. The films survives on visuals and design of course, performances aren't that great and the story limps to a conclusion but it still manages to give you shivers whilst you watch.
Super Reviewer
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- Dahlia Gillespie: Into the fire she swallowed their hate.
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- Alessa: Now the dream of this life must end, and so too must the dreamers within it. For over thirty years they have denied their own fates. For thirty years, they've lied to their own souls. But now is the end of days, and I am the Reaper.
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- Dahlia Gillespie: They are wolves in the skin of sheep. They brought about their own hell, they'll take you with them.
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- Alessa: I'm the dark part of Alessa.
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- Dahlia Gillespie: Fire doesn't cleanse, it blackens!
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- Alessa: When you're hurt and scared for so long, the fear and pain turn to hate and the hate starts to change the world.
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