Silent Hill (2006)

Silent Hill looks incredible and talks like a strategy guide. Christophe Gans clearly knows the video games inside out, and you can tell from the first siren: ash drifting down like snow, walls peeling away into rust when the darkness rolls in, and a hallway of twitching, faceless nurses that’s one of the creepiest things in any game movie. The monsters move wrong in the best way. Then people open their mouths. Radha Mitchell does her best as Rose, but she spends most of the movie running down corridors yelling a name, and the last stretch stops cold for a long, clunky history lesson. Sean Bean gets a whole subplot in the normal world that goes nowhere. At 125 minutes, the fog starts to feel like padding. Audiences gave it a C CinemaScore, and it still made $100.6 million worldwide on a reported $50M. A 4.9 because the nightmare looks real and the story never wakes up. $879 says the next fire drill at work makes you freeze for a second longer than everybody else.

What works: The production design is outstanding, from the falling ash to the faceless nurses, and the creatures feel genuinely unsettling.

What doesn’t: The dialogue is stiff, the final act stalls for a long explanation, and the subplot with Sean Bean’s character goes nowhere.

Who it’s for: Fans of the games and horror viewers who care more about atmosphere than story.