Oi! Been awhile. Here's some quickies.Casting issues- If can spot the mole as soon as the actor appears, your casting needs work! The Sentinel- I'm talkin' to you! It's one thing to cast an actor with a history of playing skeevy bastards, if they can convincingly play the good guy until their big reveal. If you get the guy who oozes from the word "action," then his reveal will mean nothing. I know Martin Donovan is a fine actor, but this was just miscast.
I can forgive a lot in a movie, especially one in which the leads play off each other as well as Kiefer Sutherland and Michael Douglas did, but my celebrity obsessions only suspend my disbelief so far.
Kudos to Eva Longiria, she actually managed to keep up her end. She did her best with a one-note character, and held her own with a gun in the shooting scenes.
Overall: Pleasantly suprised, it's still 24-lite, but I'm pretty OK with that.
Sound check, please- If your movie is called Silent Hill, you might want to, oh, I don't know, try a little silence here and there. Some of what would have been the creepiest scenes were ruined by an anvil-ridden soundtrack. Someone please get these people some good Asian horror flicks to peruse. Silence may be golden, but it can also be oppressive, claustrophobic, atmospheric, and laden with the terror of what you should be hearing, but aren't.But don't mistake soundtracks with sound fx. Some of the creepiest things in this movie were the sounds the creatures were making. I don't care who you are, you meet something on the street making those sounds and you know sh*%'s going downhill fast.
As for the casting, the cackle of Alice Krige's voice, whose silky accent dripped with honey-laced strychnine was the perfect foil for our little girl lost. If Jodell Ferland can keep that ability to balance sweet and innocent with it's darker sister, cruel and vicious, she will be a power to be reckoned with (assuming she doesn't fall by the Hollywood wayside).
Overall: Slightly disappointed. It was a solid entry to the video-game to movie pantheon, there have been worse, but it wasn't nearly as creepy as it should have been.
Go see Thank You For Smoking. You will thank me- if you can get over Katie Holmes' sex scenes, that is. Dawson would be shocked. Tom probably fainted. I thought it was hysterical.
