Silent Hill makes its audience go through hell

So your little girl is a sleepwalker, who somnambulates to the edge of a steep ol' cliff. When, in a bid to save her life, you tackle her, all she can scream about is Silent Hill this and Silent Hill that. She's obviously nuts. But rather than institutionalize her, as your husband smartly suggests, you decide to drive her over to this Silent Hill and see what the fuss is about. The place is a dreary hellhole that never stops raining ash.

You're in Silent Hill, the movie, and if you don't mind my saying so, you're an idiot. You're a trouper, too, one who has barely parked the car when your little girl up and runs away, leaving you all alone to fend off one unconvincing, indeciph-erable gang of special effects after the next.

Still, being the determined mother you are, you spend two incoherent hours trying to track her down. At various points, you seem trapped in the work of Hieronymus Bosch while being chased by the work of Damien Hirst. Rather than use the mobile phone hanging around your neck to inform the Saatchi Gallery that its horrific possessions are on the loose, you just stagger from room to room in a big abandoned building.

You'd call the police, except a cop has already joined you. She's a tough, shapely gal with a tight uniform and a short, dangerous haircut. You and she are the Cagney and Lacey of this underworld. You get to step on huge bugs, get splattered with blood, walk among a clique of Bob Fosse-styled zombies, and see dozens of people gratuitously eviscerated. You encounter a warren of pseudo-Christian wackos in need of moisturizer and combs.

The zealots do help you find your daughter -- until the head wacko, who looks as ravaged as Nicole Kidman did at the end of The Portrait of a Lady, realizes that your kid reminds her a lot of a demon child she once knew. Now people have to be burned alive at the stake.

You fight for your life and your daughter's life, though, oddly, not your integrity, while your husband tries to find you but can't. He's one place. You're somewhere else. Tens of millions of dollars were spent to tell us what we should have known going in: that the makers of the movie you're slogging through will spare no expense to demonstrate how much they hate us.

Do us a favor. Tell them the feeling is mutual.