F

A lot of aimless wandering and running goes on in “Silent Hill,” and since the would-be thriller runs on unconscionably for a full two hours, that proves an awful lot. But that’s a secondary problem in the script by Roger Avary (who co-wrote “Pulp Fiction” as well as directing “Killing Zoe” and “The Rules of Attraction”), which is based–how strictly I cannot say–on yet another “popular” video game (how popular, again I cannot say). In it, traumatized mother Rose Da Silva (Radha Mitchell) searches for her adopted daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland), who’s been suffering terrible bouts of sleepwalking and whom she misplaces en route to the spooky West Virginia burg whose name the youngster has been muttering during those episodes.

This is not just a retread of “Flightplan,” since it plays out its scenario on land rather than in the air. But the ash-bound atmosphere of the creepy village that’s the site of mom’s frantic efforts (a true ghost town, abandoned three decades earlier because of an underground coal fire) certainly has a cloudy aspect to it, and Sean Bean is a member of the cast here, too, playing Rose’s concerned husband Christopher rather than a pilot to be sure, but equally dull as he was the first time around this my-child-is-missing plot.

But in “Flightplan” one could at least understand what was going on, and when the denouement rolled around–as silly as it was–it was intelligible. I’d like to be able to tell you what’s happening in “Silent Hill,” but none of it makes the slightest bit of sense. It has something to do with there being two versions of the deserted town–the dank, grey, ominous one into which Rose (and a brusque female highway patrolman played by Laurie Holden) stumble in search of Sharon, and a still-deserted but full-color variant to which Christopher comes looking for his wife. (Why neither of them burned up in the fire is unclear.) It also has something to do with a fanatical religious sect headed by a woman pompously called Christabella (Alice Krige) that survives in the “gloomy” Silent Hill, apparently having been responsible for the original fire and now fighting supposed demons and burning accused witches. In addition, it has something to do with that group’s disfigurement of another child, called Alessa, apparently because she was illegitimate; if I understood the goofy five-minute explanation that’s suddenly inserted near the close (via a voiceover accompanying lots of grainy flashback footage), Sharon was some sort of spin-off of Alessa, but Alessa’s form has also been taken over by some demonic force inhabiting a gate to hell beneath the town. And it has something to do with a local cop (Kim Coates) who was apparently involved in the original fire and is now attempting to keep the town’s secret under wraps–though why is never made clear.

Of course, I might be in error about all or some of this. But you’d never be able to tell that from the movie, which is such a hopeless jumble of bad effects (creatures that look suspiciously like people encased in rubber and instructed to jiggle like bad exotic dancers, a final image of an apparently barbecued girl emitting hundreds of barbed-wire sprays to impale those religious fanatics and literally rip them into showers of blood and gore), plot ellipses and swerves between reality and some spectral state (most clearly in the closing sequence, explicable only if some of the characters are now ghosts) that when the closing credits come up, you’ll feel the urge to echo one of Holden’s earlier lines: “What the f*** is going on?” It’s difficult to comprehend how some viewers can sit happily through a piece as thoroughly incomprehensible as this load of drivel while complaining that classics like “L’Avventura,” “Last Year at Marienbad” or “8 ½” are hard to understand.

Director Christophe Gans was previously responsible for the underrated “Brotherhood of the Wolf,” an over-the-top gothic horror tale but one demonstrating a sort of loony grandeur that made it sui generis; but this time around he seems to be merely throwing everything he can think of at the screen and hoping that some of it sticks. Mitchell doesn’t have much problem getting through the movie–she’s up to the physical demands (including running around in her undies in the opening scene) and had to memorize very little dialogue, since most of her lines consist of shouting her daughter’s name repeatedly as she searches for her. Holden looks buff and strides around authoritatively in tight-fitting leather pants until her character meets an unseemly demise, which is all that’s expected, and Bean seems as perplexed as we are, which is understandable. The worst performance surely comes from Krige, whose pursed-lipped villainess is as stiff as a board and even more arch; but a word must also be directed to young Ferland, whose screams are so piercing that you might think her a good understudy for Dakota Fanning. The technical team, including cinematographer Dan Lausten and production designer Carol Spier, do their jobs efficiently enough, creating a gloomy, dark mood throughout, but it’s all for naught.

All dank mood and grisly effects and no logic, this is easily one of the most boring, incoherent, overproduced movies ever made. And at two full hours, it’s certainly far too much of a bad thing.