Review: Silent Hill

I've never played the Silent Hill video game, but now I feel like I have. I understand that the plots are different, but the movie -- with all of its maze-like passageways, physical challenges, and endless gathering of clues and equipment to be conveniently used later -- is exactly like watching someone play a game. You can appreciate the story, but you get tired of watching the characters go down corridor after corridor; from level to increasingly harder level.

There is a cool story though. An adopted child has a chronic sleepwalking problem and screams out the name "Silent Hill" in her sleep. Her parents learn that she was born in a town called Silent Hill -- which has since turned into a ghost town -- so mother and daughter head off on a road trip to confront the past and hopefully end the sleeping problems. What they find in Silent Hill may be drawn out longer than is necessary, but it's also genuinely creepy and a satisfying conclusion to the mystery.