Silent Hill

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Year:	2006
Country of origin:	Canada / France
Director:	Christophe Gans
Genre:	Video game borefest
Starring:	Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Laurie Holden, Deborah Kara Unger
Rating:	2/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0384537/
Tagline:	Enjoy your stay.
Favourite line:	None worth mentioning

Here's a phrase that makes the blood freeze in my veins in a heartbeat: Movie based on video game.
With the mental scars of such fare as Streetfighter and (I curl into a ball, legs tucked tight, arms clutched to my chest, shaking with fear and shame) House of the Dead still freshly inflicted, it was with some trepidation that I approached this one, based on a hugely popular and critically acclaimed spookfest that I have played on occasion.
Here's how the gaming experience went for me:
Started playing, enjoyed the look and feel, the general spooky atmosphere.
Liked killing a few slimy things, but eventually got bored of perpetually wandering around deserterd streets, with nothing at all happening.
Here's how the movie experience worked for me:
Started watching, enjoyed the look and feel, the general spooky atmosphere.
Liked watching the sexy female cop kill a few slimy things, but eventually got bored of characters perpetually wandering around deserted streets, with nothing at all happening.
So the console to cinema screen port was achieved flawlessly.
Massively overlong, this comes in at a cool 125 minutes and, I swear on Jesus' left nut, at least 30 minutes of that run time is spent without dialogue as characters mill around the creepy town of Silent Hill.
The plot is almost impenetrable, mainly due to the fact that by the time something actually happens you are all but comatose, so extracting relevance from expositional scenes becomes quite tricky.
Crucially, this bores more than scares and no horror flick should be charged with that accusation.
Well made, sure, and spooky too, but utterly crippled by the run time.
If this was 80 minutes, I'd have fucking loved it.
The fools.