Rose (Radha Mitchell) is beginning to fear for her child's safety and sanity. After an almost fatal incident, Rose decides that she needs to take action to protect her daughter. She decides to take her away to discover Silent Hill, a dilapidated town that she constantly recites when she is dreaming. Rose is sure that there will be some clue there that could save her but when they arrive, her daughter goes missing and Rose begins to uncover some dark secrets about the town.

Silent Hill differentiates itself from most of its video game peers as it relies less on action and more on atmosphere. The film, to its credit, does manage to create an effective sense of foreboding and dread which certainly carries the first half of the film. Visually the film is wonderful. French director Christophe Gans fills the screen with some haunting imagery and the film is reminiscent of The Cell in the way that the imagery manages to totally override the hectic plot.

While the plot starts off making some sense, it soon descends into incoherence. As the eventual plot is revealed the film turns into a second rate knock-off of The Village, complete with pretentious dialogue. It never manages to be as scary as the build-up. As the film is based on a video game, it often has a terrible effect on the script. Oh look there's a clue lying on the floor! Yet again Hollywood has proven the transition from video game to cinema is not one which can be easily made. It also has that frustrating feeling of watching someone else play a game and not being able to play yourself.

Radha Mitchell again proves herself as a fine actress and lends a certain gravitas to the film. Sean Bean also crops up as her panicked husband but his scenes are hugely redundant. The problem when adapting a video game is that naturally there has to be some added depth, or at least some attempt at depth. So surrounding all the familiar elements of the original game are some painfully expositional scenes which fail to provide the intended effect of 'fleshing' out the story.

Silent Hill is certainly not the worst of all of the video game adaptations, in fact its one of the best. But that is probably the biggest backhanded compliment a film can receive. The visuals are stunning and Radha Mitchell makes for an engaging heroine but the script and the plot fail to add up to anything resembling coherency. It’s a step in the right direction for this new sub genre but there's still a hell of a lot of work to do.

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