Silent Hill [2006]

To make a bold statement, Silent Hill might be the best videogame adaptation ever made, and it simply isn't given enough attention.

With some seriously stunning cinematography by Dan Laustsen (Shape of Water, John Wick 2/3), a wonderfully adapted script that pulls from several elements of the first three games in the series, and a score stolen straight from those same games, Silent Hill has been given something of an unfair ride over the years. With a paltry 6.5 on IMDB and a 35% on Rotten Tomatoes, one would be led to believe that this is a bad movie, and maybe even a worse adaptation.

I think Hill suffered some pretty serious guilt by association with some other genre films at the time. The astoundingly stupid Resident Evil series was about to be 3 movies in, and Saw 4 had just been announced. As a fan of the games, it's hard for me to look at this totally objectively, but I really think audiences just weren't ready to take this seriously as an adaptation and it ended up getting pretty mediocre reviews from both sides of the table.

Fans of the game criticized it for pulling too many elements from across the series and not telling a "faithful" story, while film critics denuded its dialogue and somewhat contrived plot. Caught between these mostly lukewarm reviews, Silent Hill has fallen out of favor and is something people just don't remember very well or associate with the campy money grabs of the time.

While certainly not perfect, Silent Hill makes excellent use of 2006 visual effects tech, some true genius behind the cameras, and a clear love for the source material to bring an experience to life that I wish was given a little more credit.