The Streets of Silent Hill

• Check out the interview with Silent Hill director, Christophe Gans.

On the east side of Toronto, hell has come home. Not that you can tell from the street. Passers by would only see the edifice of a smart, modern studio that nevertheless fits snug into the aging wood and brick of the semi-industrial neighborhood. In that respect, it's the perfect place to bring to life the twisted township of Silent Hill, where hidden layers are constantly being revealed.

It's late July, 2005. Sony has invited a handful of editors to the studio to see a small corner of the nightmare burg. (A hold was put on the story until just last week.) In retrospect, it's almost a defensive act; some of us have come straight from the San Diego Comic Con, where we were subjected to a stream of table interviews and clips promoting the likes of Doom and Underworld: Evolution. There's pressure to make this one stand out.

Knowing how those films ended up, not to mention the hilarious debacle of Bloodrayne, the visit now feels like an admission from Sony that there's something to prove. That may not be far off the mark. Silent Hill may be a tiny town, but it hosts a narrative that sprawls across timelines and features monsters that teeter on the edge of physical impossibility. It's far from an easy adaptation, and when a skilled crew couldn't even nail the simplicity of Doom, suffice to say there are doubters.

Leaping off from the huge storyline (spanning three games and official offshoot The Room) is the task of screenwriter Roger Avary (Pulp Fiction, The Rules of Attraction) who has pulled together a tangle of characters and evil conspiracies to generate the film's blueprint. It's a serious task, weaving together primary elements from the first and third games and touches of the second.

We still don't know much about the exact story, though it concerns Rose (Radha Mitchell, Man on Fire), who unwittingly ends up in the unstable township of Silent Hill while taking her daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland, Tideland) to a faith healer. When Sharon disappears, Rose frantically begins to search for her, eventually aided by policewoman Cybil (Laurie Holden, The X-Files).

Avery is skilled and his name has cache, but his flicks haven't inevitably succeeded. Just ask anyone who saw Killing Zoe. So producers Samuel Hadida and Don Carmody (veterans of the Resident Evil films and much of David Cronenberg's career) have turned to director Christophe Gans, the French ex-pat who stunned genre lovers with The Brotherhood of the Wolf.

The director is broad and boisterous. He's obviously a gamer (he professes love for Metal Gear, Quake, and Square's RPGs) and holds very specific ideas and opinions about game adaptation.