Sharon is haunted in her dreams by this mysterious town, which Rose ends up Googling and then sneaks off to visit, only to find that all the roads are blocked. Police officer Cybil Bennett (Holden) follows the mother and daughter from a gas station, determined not to let them go to the isolated ghost town. After awakening from a car accident, Rose finds Sharon gone and what seems to be snow falling all around. It turns out to be ash. The people in the city of Silent Hill have been distorted into faceless claylike forms that dissolve into ash and fall from the skies.

The outside world repeats the story that Officer Thomas Gucci (Coates) tells Chris when he comes searching for his wife and daughter—that the town was destroyed by a huge mining explosion and the coal is still burning below ground. "Many of the bodies have never been found," Gucci says.

Meanwhile, in a seemingly different dimension, Cybil and Rose come across some of the remaining townsfolk. A wacky, wigged-out woman in tattered clothes, Dahlia (Unger), insists Sharon is her daughter and warns the visitors of evil forces. It turns out there's a group of locals who are holed up in a church run by Christabella (Krige), who has a habit of burning people she thinks are witches in a brutal ceremony.

Meanwhile, everyone is in search of Sharon—and she seems to have split into three different girls.

Motherhood is powerful—and scary

This is a story about motherhood, but it's not a frantic mom trying to find her kid lost on a superjet, or a mom trying to protect her kid from an alien. It's an intriguing, multilayered story about moms of different generations, and the sacrifices they've had to make. Like the game, the story is set up in different dimensions. The stories take place in the same setting, but people cross each other's paths and can't interact. Sometimes the film goes black rather disturbingly—like a game resetting—and, as in the game, it's impossible to tell who's a friend or foe.

The wild-haired crazy woman, Dahlia, is exiled by the rest of the town because of a decision she made 30 years before, when her child was dubbed a witch. Her maternal instincts seem to get translated to Rose, and even the butch Officer Bennett gets a pang of parenthood. Officer Bennett is one of the familiar characters from the game of the same name, and Holden does a nice job of personifying the heroine. Most of the characters are female, most of the battling is done by women, and most of the bad guys are also women, which makes for a fascinating film.

Even more fascinating are the creepy special effects. When an armless blob stumbles along the road toward Rose and Cybil, it's chilling, and when Rose runs through a maze of fences chased by those blobby creatures, it's nerve-wracking. There is a good share of gore, but it's handled creatively—especially the slow burning of flesh on one character's face in one memorable scene. There are swarms of beetles, a triangle-headed ogre carrying a monster-sized knife, a henchman who looks like a giant Howard Stern and other things that could make you jump, but it's all more interesting to watch than it is really scary.

The humor sprinkled throughout the film comes from masterminds Gans (who directed Brotherhood of the Wolf, one of the best werewolf films ever) and writer Avary (who adapted The Rules of Attraction). In one scene, when Rose awakens after smiting all the creatures and turning them into ash, a jukebox plays Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire." When an old mechanic explains how the coal fumes will kill you if you breathe too much of them, he's lighting up a cigarette while working on a car. Religious symbolism and phrases are constantly shown in the background, often foretelling what's to come. And, you just know that when Rose keeps saying, "Don't worry, it's going to be all right," it very definitely isn't going to be right at all.