Roger Ebert took the time to watch Silent Hill, I say that with all sincerity, because they didn't show a preview for him, he had to actually go to the movies to see it.

His write up of the movie is quite interesting. It's not so much a review as a, I don't know, monologue. I don't mean that as an insult, Ebert's look at the movie doesn't lack some interesting points, but it seems that it was more about his firming up his argument about games and art.

I was out in Boulder last week on a panel about video games and whether they can be art, and a lot of the students said they were really looking forward to "Silent Hill" because it's one of the best games and they read on the internet that the movie was supposed to live up to the game. That was all speculation, of course, because Sony Pictures declined to preview the film for anybody, perhaps because they were concerned it would not live up to the game, or because they were afraid it would. When I told one student that the movie was not being previewed, there was real pain on his face, as if he had personally been devalued.

Not only can I not describe the plot of this movie, but I have a feeling the last scene reverses half of what I thought I knew (or didn't know). What I can say is that it's an incredibly good-looking film. The director, Christophe Gans, uses graphics and special effects and computers and grainy, scratchy film stock and surrealistic images and makes "Silent Hill" look more like an experimental art film than a horror film -- except for the horror, of course. The visuals are terrific; credit also to cinematographer Dan Laustsen, production designer Carol Spier, and the art, set and costume artists. But what are we to make of dialogue such as I will
now describe?

I'd say go read the rest, because it is worth it, but only do so if you don't mind tons of spoilers. I'd suggest maybe coming back to it after seeing the movie, if you plan to.

Oh, one more thing. Ebert gave the movie one and a half stars, his readers gave it three and a half.

Silent Hill [RogerEbert.com, thanks Brad]