When her daughter almost dies while on one of her frequent sleepwalking outings, Rose daSilva (Radha Mitchell) thinks of no better way to fix it than to take her to the haunted town Sharon, her adopted child, keeps mentioning in her nightmares. Oh, and she goes without even telling her husband, and also runs away from the cops without any reason at all. Bright girl, huh? you better get used to it, her common sense actually takes a dive as the movie goes on.
Soon enough Sharon dissappears in the ghost town that gives the movie its title. For the rest of the film Rose will search for her daughter in suitably spooky places, mostly with the help of the cop she ran away from earlier. But in order to find Sharon, she will need to solve the puzzle that the town itself poses.
To go into it any further would spoil what, surprisingly enough, is a fairly good plot. The script is not up to it, though, and the pacing suffers for it- there is an overlong exposition sequence in particular that not only overexplains everything you managed to work out yourself, but does it in such a way that will make your neurons commit seppuku en masse.
And that complaint, this maddening mix of good and crap, extends to cover all the other aspects of the movie. Take the visuals, for example.
The town of Silent Hill is spot on- a spooky ghost of a settlement with mist obscuring everything in white and a constant shower of ashes raining down. All the derelict interiors are also excellent- and when the Dark arrives and things get overtly supernatural, well- the effect is nothing short of breathtaking. The walls peel to reveal bizarre blood-colored rot patterns, floors become rusty grids of iron letting you catch a glimpse of hellish fires raging beneath. All's great, till the monsters show up. Usually loads of them, and they're a bit, uh, shit actually- I laughed out loud hard at some... let's try and describe one of them:
A zombie duck-like thing. Its torso is a mass of scarred tissue, except for a pulsating sphincter from which it projectile-defecates caustic diarrhea. Nothing even remotely scary. Might look like the critters in the game, but the movie would definitively be a lot better off without any of them- and the fact that they're overused doesn't help at all.
Most of the characters well defined and likeable, with some unexpected depth. There is a running subplot of Rose's husband (Sean Bean) trying to find her and running into a police officer that seems to be covering everything up; once some of the plot details become apparent, the reason for the cop's actions take on a different light- how often can you say that happens in a would be blockbuster? The female cop/sidekick is a bit two dimentional, but a strong character and likeable enough. Unfortunately we're stuck most of the time with Rose, and while she's also likeable, her only reason for existing is to move the plot forward- every fucking cliche misstep in the horror book? she'll do it happily, twice. Living proof that Darwin was wrong, wrong, wrong!
So the movie flip flops between rather good and utter crap very frequently, often within the same scene. Extremely frustrating, especially considering that the balance tends towards the shitty side of the spectrum. But then something happens- the climactic speech is laughable and didactic, but the final showdown that ensues is way cool, bloody and suitably apocalyptic (the henai reference made me chuckle). So far so good, time for the fake ending.
And when it arrives, like so many things in this movie, it comes completely out of the left field. A truly beautiful ending, understated and poignant- it easily, completely outclasses the rest of the movie, and even feels a bit undeserved. Stunning.