Silent Hill, the latest game-to-film adaptation, is getting terrible reviews.  Although I’m a moderate fan of the Silent Hill franchise, I don’t plan on seeing the movie the San Francisco Chronicle deems full of “bad acting, bad dialogue and a confusing plot — all of which become exponentially more painful when the movie goes on forever.”  A few more choice reviews consider Silent Hill to be “witless, soulless and joyless” and “dumber than a bag of coffin nails”, earning it the overall consensus of 29% recommendable at RottenTomatoes. 

Joystiq gives us the run-down of Silent Hill’s pros and cons:

What Works:

• The audio: … and by audio, we mean everything that was not dialogue. The music, while cheesy at parts, really fits the movie well. The sound effects are very creepy, and the filtering is effective when used (although we would have loved for the sound to be more disturbed).
• Pyramid Head: In what little time he was on screen, Pyramid Head really stole the show.
• The Setting: As we have seen
• The previews: Seeing glimpses of The DaVinci Code and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest made us giddy.

What Doesn’t Work:

• The dialogue: Laughable at best. We feel sorry for everyone with a speaking role — especially Sean Bean (but we will get to that in a second).
• The introduction: Instead of trying to actually explain the situation (or why we should care), the film begins with a melodramatic scene involving the main actress in scantily clad clothing. We could have used a 10-minute prologue showing what brought about this trip to a haunted town.
• Too Long: Even without an introduction, the film clocks in at 120 minutes — we can think of at least 112 minutes that one might have cut out.
• Needs more Boromir: Seriously, Sean Bean had no point in the movie at all. If they had given him a long sword and the Horn of Gondor, to ride into Silent Hill and behead all demons in heroic vigilance, it just might’ve saved the film.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 22nd, 2006 at 12:46 pm and is tagged with coffin nails, san francisco chronicle, davinci code, minute prologue, pirates of the caribbean dead man s chest, joystiq, film adaptation, horn of gondor, pyramid head, choice reviews, pirates of the caribbean dead man, pirates of the caribbean, sean bean, silent hill, glimpses, vigilance, pros and cons, sound effects, little time, demons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

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