March 10, 2006

It's 95 degrees and humid outside and the Toronto soundstages aren't air conditioned, but you won't hear a lot of complaining from the cast of the new thriller "Silent Hill." During a set visit last July, it became clear that this adaptation of the best-selling video game tries to stand apart from its console-to-movie predecessors ("Doom," "Tomb Raider") by creating something truly memorable.

Today's shoot finds star Radha Mitchell weaving her way through some nasty nurses as she continues to search for her missing daughter in the abandoned town of Silent Hill, W.V. As Rose, Mitchell finds herself in a world corrupted by darkness, and if she ends up touching the nurses, she's liable to be slit by one of their deadly scalpels. The stunning set, inspired by the original game, owes some of its daring to director Christophe Gans, director of the popular thriller "Brotherhood of the Wolf."

"Every day has just been an assault on the senses," Mitchell says during a break from shooting. "I guess today was just a sample of that. And I think Christophe has a really interesting take on the concept of the video game. And you do have a sense of what it must feel like to be sort of stuck in this chase."

Laurie Holden plays a police officer that tries to help Rose in her frantic search. She thinks "Hill" is far from your everyday horror movie.

"I think of this as a nightmare fairy tale," Holden says. "It's kind of 'Alice in Wonderland' meets Dante's 'Inferno.' It's very high art and frightening and violent and sexy and elegant all at the same time."

Sean Bean, who plays Rose's husband, concurs ... to a degree.

"[It] doesn't pull punches when it comes to the gore factor," he says. "If something bad is happening, you can bet it's messy."

The invited press can only view one set on this particular day, but if the rest are half as interesting as this one, the buzz that's building on "Hill" won't fizzle out.

"The sets are definitely characters in the film," Holden says. "They have emotional states in that they change, and you'll see the same set and you'll see it from a completely different perspective ... like a hallucination."

The entire cast, including Deborah Kara Unger and Alice Krige, agrees that the gamers are one group that won't be disappointed.

"Fans are going to be knocked out," Holden says.

Despite the heat and humidity of this summer day, it's clear that all this work may make a trip to "Silent Hill" a welcome one.

"Silent Hill" opens nationwide April 21.