Silent Hill Review
by [email protected] (dnb AT dca DOT net)April 28th, 2006
SILENT HILL
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2006 David N. Butterworth
**1/2 (out of ****)
Just as the musical scale determines that Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, so too must cinematic range dictate that Every Good Girl Worth Her (Waldo) Salt Deserves a Crack at Her Very Own Horror Flick.
After all, one hasn't really emoted, purely and viscerally, until one has screamed the hell house down, been bled, belittled, and pursued by legions of demons and the demonic repossessed. For horror films so often demand the ultimate from an actor, male or female, and while the genre itself is rarely considered "serious" fare many actors, male or female (but especially female), don't believe they can be truly taken seriously until they've paid their dues by being tortured, tormented, and/or scared stiff-less in a rollicking fright fest'.
In that regard it's not unlike doing Shakespeare, or appearing in a Woody Allen film.
Speaking of which the distressed damsel in question this week (coming lukewarm on the highfalutin stilettos of Kate Hudson in "The Skeleton Key," Jennifer Connolly in "Dark Water," Naomi Watts in "The Ring Two," and Sarah Michelle Geller in "The Grudge") is Australian actress Radha Mitchell, who gave a doubly good accounting of herself in the schizophrenic Allen comedy "Melinda and Melinda," not to mention decent descents in smaller roles ("Finding Neverland," "Man on Fire," and "Phone Booth"). Now Mitchell finds herself going for serious broke as a mother searching for her sick, somnambulistic daughter in the haunted and supposedly deserted town of "Silent Hill."
When Rose Da Silva's adopted daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) twice refers to a place called Silent Hill while sleepwalking, her mother drives her to the abandoned West Virginia mining town of the same name to seek some answers. (Her husband, the lusty Sean Bean, however, believes institutionalization to be the better remedy.) Sharon quickly goes missing in the fog-forsaken place (under which the fires that devastated the town still burn) and Rose spends the better part of the movie's 127 minutes pursuing an elusive child-like figure (clearly she never saw "Don't Look Now") before figuring it all out.
What starts out as a simple, almost black-and-white ghost story slowly morphs into an effects-laden extravaganza, with nods to the afore-mentioned "'Now," "Witchfinder
General," "Bug," "Carrie," "Constantine," "The Fog," "Necromancer," and countless others. It comes as no surprise, therefore, to learn that "'Hill" is directed, in overlong, Grand Guignol style, by Frenchman Christophe Gans. Gans made that desirous crossover art/horror/martial arts picture "Brotherhood of the Wolf" ("Le Pacte des Loups") a few years back and, similarly, the longer "'Hill" goes on, the more absurd, the more over the top it becomes.
Ashes fall like new snow, air raid sirens herald darkness, and roads simply run out. There's enough religious symbolism here to skin a cat (not to mention all that razor wire in the grand finale). Mitchell, her Australian accent occasionally breaking through, seems more than up to the physical and emotional challenge of it all but to what end?
Ultimately "Silent Hill" proves too much of a good thing. Mitchell's the good thing; everything else is simply too much.
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David N. Butterworth
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