The movie Silent Hill is probably the best adaptation of a video game property to the medium of film so far. Of course that is a little like saying the original Volkswagen Beetle is the best floating car so far – you’re still not getting a cruise liner. But after the sheer garbage that has been trotted out as video-game-to-movie entertainment in the last year, Silent Hill stands head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd.

Silent Hill has as the center of its story Rose Da Silva (Radha Mitchell) and her daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland). Sharon was adopted by Rose and her husband Christopher (Sean Bean) as an infant. They know she came from an orphanage in West Virginia but nothing of the circumstances surrounding her coming up for adoption. Now nine years old, Sharon has lately been sleepwalking into dangerous situations and has uttered the words “Silent Hill” each time. Rose finds that there is a town in West Virginia called Silent Hill and becomes convinced she must take her daughter to it in order to save her from the increasingly-dangerous bouts of sleepwalking. Husband Christopher is not convinced this is a good idea.

Silent Hill is not your average sleepy little burg. In 1974 a fire started that ignited coal seams under the town. Many deaths occurred, of which a great number of the bodies were never found, and the whole town was evacuated as the underground coal continued to burn out of control. The town has since been sealed off and the state highway no longer goes there.

Almost to Silent Hill, Sharon arouses the suspicion of a motorcycle cop, Cybil Bennet (Laurie Holden). Bennet gives chase and pulls over Rose and Sharon, but seeing the turnoff for Silent Hill is close, Rose speeds away with Officer Bennet tailing. As she gets to the town limits sign, Rose sees a girl in the road and instinctively swerves to avoid her. Coming to after the accident, Rose finds Sharon gone and herself in a nightmare world. All around her the town is gray and ash falls from the sky like snow. There are also creatures that could only have come from the mind of someone like HP Lovecraft. Initially Rose thinks she is alone, but she later finds that Officer Bennet also crossed over into this nightmare dimension and that not all of the human inhabitants of Silent Hill are gone either. What follows is Rose’s odyssey to find her daughter and learn the truth that underlies the events at Silent Hill.

The story does not always fully explain elements and often seems to actually revel in obfuscating bits of its own plotline. But the string of events is clear enough and it ultimately works as a tale of supernatural horror in a location existing just below and parallel to the real world where terrible deeds caused a local to be cut off and isolated from the one we regularly perceive; a theme that has been explored several times in the supernatural horror and science fiction genres. Sadly, the film does drag in a couple of spots and its in-excess-of-two-hours running time is a bit long for the actual amount of story present in the movie.

Silent Hill is based on the game of the same name by Konami that first appeared on the original PlayStation console in early 1999. And several elements of the game did make it to the movie. The initial setup of a person having an accident and waking up to find his daughter missing is the same – with a change of sex of the main character. The game device of radios giving off a burst of static when monsters are close is incorporated too. I think most fans of the game will find the movie nicely captures its essence.

Silent Hill is ably directed by Christophe Gans, a French director who cut his horror-genre teeth with such films as Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) and Necronomicon: Book of Dead (1994). Like many European film makers, he gives a great deal of time to establishing mood and atmosphere rather than just rushing from one set-piece action scene to the next. I was also very pleased to see that Gans did not use the tired device of things suddenly jumping out at the audience to achieve his scares. Things creep from the shadows so you know what is happening, but as a watcher you are powerless to change it. Being powerless is very scary.

- Gans got a first-rate cast for his movie. Radha Mitchell (Finding Neverland, Melinda and Melinda) will be familiar to Sci-Fi fans as the pilot Frye in the thriller Pitch Black, a role I thought she was very good and believable in. Of course the husband, Sean Bean, is probably best known to film goers as Boromir in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of a little book series called The Lord of the Rings. Jordelle Ferland, playing daughter Sharon, will be instantly recognizable to rabid watchers of Stephen King mini-series for her portrayal of the haunting little girl in the interesting, sometimes-funny, but ultimately-too-long Kingdom Hospital that aired on ABC in 2004. Laurie Holden (The Majestic, The Fantastic Four) as Officer Cybil Bennet is underutilized in the story, but the character’s limited role is well-played by the actress. An under-appreciated actress who is experienced in the Sci-Fi and horror genres through her appearances as the Borg queen in Star Trek: First Contact and the malevolent mother in Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers, Alice Krige gives another fine performance as the fanatical leader of the human inhabitants of Silent Hill township, Christabella.

The look of the film is excellent. Silent Hill is no place you’d ever want to live – whether in the real world or the nightmare dimension inhabited by weird creatures. The effects are really good with the creature design very accurately capturing the disturbing images that gave the original game such a unique style.

I’m probably going to be in a minority of film reviewers here, but I actually enjoyed Silent Hill. It admittedly has some flaws in story development and lags a little while running a bit long, but I believe fans of the game or fans of the supernatural-horror genre are going to enjoy it. See it on a big screen for maximum impact. - Will Jayson Hill.