Sylvene knows more about the gaming world. Maybe she can give her opinion? I really hated the film as well, and I do like a good horror flick once in a while.
The game was good - is good. Actually, very good. Especially if you are into that genre - Horror / Action. Fantastic graphics, beautiful art and chilling soundtrack. It actually has quite a bit of cult following in the game world. There are actually 6 Silent Hill games. Which shows you the longevity of the title. I couldn't see how they would turn it into movie, but guessed that a good screenwriter and director could pull it off.
A few friends who were fans of the game went to watch the movie after watching the trailers and came back not only disappointed but disgusted. The game IS produced by the Japanese, so the English dialogue isn't that good and as the article put it, the iffy dialogue carried through to the movie. The game has beautiful cinematic cutscenes of possible ending scenarios and they are reached by the player making certain decisions during the game. In the game, you played the main character and made decisions, so you have an immediate buy-in.
The movie could also have suffered from pressures of re-writes. Sean was not originally slated to have a starring role. Due to studio pressure for a male lead, he was re-written into a subplot - all those surreal scenarios which worked well enough in the game - but felt disjointed and messy in a movie. Now... still, it looked great (from what I saw of the trailers) and some friends confirmed it was great until the dialogue was pointed out whereupon the defense was. "It was bad in the game too!"
I didn't watch the movie because it got thumbs down from everyone I knew and I'm not a fan of horror movies. I only watch them on the home screen and if I have someone who's lap I can crawl into. So I haven't watched a horror movie in oh... 6 years I think.