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Welcome to the sleepy little town of Silent Hill, population 0; here there are tigers and rattlesnakes and much, much worse.

Thirty years ago the town of Silent Hill was a small mining community in West Virginia. When a mother gave birth to a child, Alessa (Jodelle Ferland), with no father, local religious fanatics claimed the father was a demon and attempted to destroy the girl for being a witch.

Unfortunately for them, the little girl lived.

In hideous pain and in great fear she lived, sustained by the life-giving forces of modern medicine. From her pain grew hatred, and her hatred bloomed into a curse that left the town completely empty. A lucky few were able to escape, but many perished in the fires of Alessa's rage. The good, upstanding zealots who'd hoped to kill the evil in their midst found themselves in a nightmare unending. Only when Rose (Radha Mitchell), trying to understand her adopted daughter Sharon's (Jodelle Ferland) nightmares, arrives in the dead lands of Silent Hill, does the truth of Alessa's suffering come to light.

Silent Hill is loosely based off of the video game series featured on the Playstation and PS2 consoles. Much like the game, the movie is extremely dark and dreary; the bright, almost bucolic "real world" gives way to the gray, misty, ash-laden Limbo, which gives way from time to time to a hellish dark underworld.

While the soundtrack and foreboding atmosphere ring true to the game, it's abundantly clear something went missing in the translation from game to movie. Right off the bat we are thrown into a confusing scene of fear and excitement as Rose charges through the night, searching for her sleepwalking daughter. Without any context as to what is going on, anyone who misses the previews may unwittingly think the projectionist accidentally started the movie somewhere in the middle of the story.

Some creatures from the game appear, but at the same tastefully-measured amount typically dished out by most game-based movies. Beasts that can only be described as "Char Babies" - twisted humanoid creatures made from red-hot soot - are the first on the scene to terrorize Rose; other beings that appear to be limping, bloody torsos that spew acid blood and those little evil bug things with human faces assault our heroine from time to time. "Pyramid Head," the evil executioner, even makes an appearance to rip the hide from one doomed soul's bones. As usual, very little context or explanation is given for any of these beasts.

Unsurprisingly, the acting and supplied dialogue are both rather putzy. After their first encounter with "Pyramid Head," Rose tries to comfort the sexy-butch cop Cybil (Laurie Holden) by telling her everything will be fine, even though the magical, fairy-land of "Fine" had long since been left on the other side of the bridge to the town. Rose's position as Captain Obvious grates when she points out how "something horrible" had gone on in the tiny town of Silent Hill.

No. Duh. Doctor Watson.

What was your first clue? The fact that you can't leave the town? The fact that there's a massive hole in an industrial complex that leads right into the fiery mine itself? Or was it the fact that from time to time a giant wearing a freakishly painful-looking helmet is trying to peel your skin off?

While visually impressive, Silent Hill sadly lacks in content. There are certainly scenes here that will either shock or spread a deep sense of dread, but others seem reminiscent of other movies. Older movies. Better movies. Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail comes to mind when the filthy, ignorant wretches screamed over and over again, "Burn the witch! Burn the witch!"

I almost expected John Cleese to pop out and say, "She turned me into a newt!"

While this movie was somewhat spooky, on the whole I felt cold afterwards. Fans of the games are sure to be disappointed with this production, as fans of Doom were disappointed of that cinematic event as well.

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