Silent Hill | 2006

Loosely based on the premise of the video game and set in the USA, the film was made entirely around the Toronto area of Ontario.

It comes as a bit of a surprise to discover that the script was written by Roger Avary, co-writer of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Being generous, I guess that the fact that every character makes every wrong decision at every opportunity is a meta-statement on horror cliches. Or am I overthinking?

The prologue sees Sharon (Jodelle Ferland), the adopted daughter of Rosa Da Silva (Radha Mitchell) and husband Christopher (Sean Bean), sleepwalking to the edge of a vertiginous precipice by a thundering waterfall (I guess her parents forgot it was there when they left the door unlocked at night).

The falls is the Devil's Punch Bowl, 185 Ridge Road in Stoney Creek, southeast Hamilton, a city about 40 miles southwest of Toronto at the western tip of Lake Ontario.

When Sharon begins screaming about a place called 'Silent Hill', Rose – against her husband's wishes – books a motel room in the nearby town of 'Braham' in order to investigate this sinister abandoned ghost town... I'm kidding, of course she doesn't. Without informing Chris, she drives directly with her disturbed daughter to Silent Hill itself, arriving in the middle of the night.

The girder bridge she needs to cross to reach the town is Sewells Road Bridge on Sewells Road, crossing the Rouge River north of Toronto Zoo in Scarborough, just northeast of Toronto.

Speeding away from a friendly police officer Cybil (Laurie Holden). who's concerned about Sharon's wellbeing, Rose crashes through locked gates, is knocked unconscious and wakes up in the morning with Sharon having disappeared.

After a minute or two, Rose leaves the car and heads into the creepy deserted town with its mist and continuous ash fall. A good job Sharon hadn't just snuck out for a quick pee and returned to find an empty car.

But obviously, Sharon will be found in the town because – well, that's where the monsters are.

Silent Hill's Main Street is the stretch of Colborne Street between King Street and Queen Street in the town of Brantford, about 20 miles west of Hamilton.

Disappointingly, in the intervening years the area has been redeveloped and the whole south side of the street has been demolished.

Now Cybil the Cop arrives in town and with no hard feelings, the two buddy up to search for the missing girl, coming across 'Midwich Elementary School' (a little nod to the village in The Midwich Cuckoos, the novel on which Children of the Damned was based).

This was about 65 miles southwest of Brantford. It was Alma College, 99 Moore Street at McIntyre Street in the city of St Thomas. "Was" because – another disappointment – the building burned down in 2008 and the site is developed as the inevitable 'luxury accommodation'.

Thankfully still here is the exterior of the 'Grand Hotel', in which Rose and Cybil discover strange remaining inhabitants of Silent Hill, which is Lister Block, 28 James Street North on the corner of King William Street, Hamilton. It currently houses the Electric Diner so you can pop in for a bit to eat.

Meanwhile, Chris is on the trail of his missing wife in the nearby town of 'Braham'. The rather convenient, and easy to break into, 'Braham's Archives', where he discovers the file on Alessa Gillespie, is back in Brantford again, and just around the corner from the 'Silent Hill Main Street' location. There are no fascinating archives to plough through, but you can get a coffee. The premises is now a branch of Tim Hortons coffee shops at 53 Dalhousie Street on the corner of Queen Street.

This economical use of locations continues as Chris gets a lead to an orphanage.

The 'Toluca County Orphanage' is the Queen Street entrance of the Scottish Rite Club, 4 Queen Street in Hamilton. And the northern side of the same building on King Street West becomes the 'Silent Hill church' where Rose and Cybil discover the weird cult. A bit of digital trickery moves the building to the top of a hill reached by a flight of steps overlooking a graveyard.

The organisation's full title is the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, a subsection of Freemasonry. Despite the name, the Rite was officially founded in Charleston, South Carolina and is now the most widely practiced Rite in the world

The Temple is something of a screen favourite which you might not recognise from Guillermo Del Toro's Gothic Crimson Peak or It: Chapter 2, when we see only its interior.

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