I enjoyed this film, and I thought it was much better than I expected it to be. All the "legit" critics have uniformally torn it apart, but if you read their comments, it appears most of them didn\'t understand it. Seems strange to me, because it\'s not that hard to understand. The atmosphere, sound and music was outstanding. The production / set design was really mind blowing. Way way beyond my expectations. Visual effects were top notch. I didn\'t see ANY visual effects shots that were outright failures. All of them worked perfectly in my opinion.
The script was average. There was nothing really over and above the basic necessities, and the story was not surprising. To expect a modern horror film to break new ground and deliver a truly surprising an unexpected story is like waiting for the second coming of the messiah. After wading through so much crap in this genre, my expectations have been lowered. Now, as long as the script is at least average, and isn\'t truly stupid and childish, I\'m reasonably satisfied.
Overall, the acting performances were average; nothing outstanding. The greatest weakness of this film was that so much of the dialogue depends on a child actress. A screenwriter should have known what a risk it is to put that much dialogue in the mouth of a child who won\'t have the skill to deliver it convincingly. That is my primary overriding complaint about the film. What a shame because it could have been handled much better by moving that dialogue to a different character, or revealing it in a different way.
***** SPOILER ***** (The spoiler tags don\'t work anymore!)
The ending (the FINAL scene) was really great in my opinion. I think Roger Ebert complained about it, but he must have been expecting more closure. I went into this from a game player\'s perspective, and I was totally expecting a setup for Silent Hill 2. It was unsettling, and it worked great for me.
***** SPOILER *****
