Silent Hill (2006)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Rose Da Silva	Radha Mitchell	½
Christopher Da Silva	Sean Bean
Cybil Bennett	Laurie Holden	½
Dahlia Gillespie	Deborah Kara Unger
Officer Thomas Gucci	Kim Coates	½
Christabella	Alica Krige
Sharon Da Silva/Alessa Gillespie	Jodelle Ferland

Review

Many successful films eventually turn into computer games, and usually not very good ones. But then there are a handful of successful computer games that turn into movies. Ideologically, that intrigues me more - because the writers of computer games usually aren't as controlled by conventions as writers of genre films. With Silent Hill, however, this serves both as a plus and a minus. A plus because the talented writer Roger Avary stays faithful to his source material, and makes his screenplay more and more detailed and intriguing as the film goes on (which is very atypical for horror movies). But also a minus, because for large parts of the film, Silent Hill very much feels like a computer game. The role of Radha Mitchell is very unchallenging for the actor, who also is not able to contribute with a notably distinctive performance. She's our protagonist to the extent that we might as well have been given a joystick to control her with. Sean Bean's role is also quite thankless, playing the usual left-behind-wife in male form, but his character is thematically decisive, and as the film progresses, the plot thickens and becomes ultimately more rewarding. French director Christophe Gans is overly flamboyant and ambitious early on, as we're not given enough time to care for the characters before they're thrown into unexplainable peril, but he eventually finds his tone and directs an enthralling finale.