Silent Hill (Blu-ray)

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There's not much tension to be found elsewhere, either. When a horde of embryonic-looking zombies attack, you're just thinking, wait a minute, how did all this happen if it's a coal-mining town that had fires burning underground, with so much ash clouding the sky and falling like snowflakes that the police put a locked gate on the only road leading to the town? More precisely, what's the relationship between the religious fanatics and the George Romero-style zombies? Or the human-faced horde of cockroaches, the big blade-wielding helmeted guy who looks like a Bionicle, or the woman (Deborah Kara Unger) who looks like a hag straight out of Shakespeare? We won't even talk about the girl's apparent double, the motorcycle cop whose actions are as suspicious as the lunatics, or the miners and their canary, which, if the air in Silent Hill is so toxic that police and the woman's husband (Sean Bean) who prod around have to use masks, why isn't the thing belly-up? Then again, these masks are the simple cloth clip-on variety intended to keep sawdust out of your nostrils, not toxic fumes. Look closely and you'll see lots of nonsensical details in this film.

Video: "Silent Hill" is a strange choice for Blu-ray release, because, like the game, most of the scenes are hazy and grainy. The town itself looks to be straight out of a video game, with the ash falling slowly and the haze hanging like a gauzy band-aid wrapped around the set. So it's a hard DVD to rank in terms of picture quality. There are a few scenes in the beginning that are "normal," and in those scenes the black levels are decent but the color saturation, as with many Sony Blu-ray releases, isn't full or rich. In this case, though, you'd expect that muted palette. It's a decent picture, but not superb. Aspect ratio is 2.35:1.

Audio: For a horror film, there's surprisingly little rear-speaker action, though the sound quality itself is rich and resonant. I just expected more sound distribution for effect. And the most effective sound occurs when, like the game, the radio or electronic devices start to blare out of control, signaling the approach of creatures. As with other Blu-ray releases from Sony, the sound options are an uncompressed English PCM 5.1 or a standard Dolby Digital 5.1 for people whose amplifier can't handle the six-channel sound. No complaints here.

Extras: The SD edition has six featurettes under the banner "Path of Darkness," in which cast members and the director are interviewed and try to convince you that the film is good. There are no features on the Blu-ray version.

Bottom Line: Despite having the kind of CGI competency you'd expect for a spin-off of a video game, "Silent Hill" is one big mish-mash that doesn't make sense, doesn't come together, and doesn't scare you. It's only hope is to become so bad over time that will eventually join the ranks of campy horror classics. Right now, it's as far from one as it gets.

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