Odeon Films isn’t focusing heavily on TV commercials to market its April 21 release of Silent Hill, the $45-million horror adaptation of the video game. Instead, it is reaching out to fans of the game through the Internet.

The Toronto-based outfit has periodically released online photos of the movie’s monstrous creatures to demonstrate its authenticity and respect for the popular game.

Fans have ‘analyzed those photos like it was intelligence on a foreign army,’ says Odeon president Bryan Gliserman.

Ads were also placed on gaming websites and ‘spy sites’ controlled by Odeon that click to the official Silent Hill website. Odeon is distributing a Silent Hill magazine in cinemas and bought some TV ad time for fake newscasts – both describing the sinister, titular town.

Borrowing from the efforts of U.S. distrib Sony Pictures and France’s Metropolitan Filmexport, there’s also a ‘design your own poster’ contest and a Silent Hill promotion that made the rounds at recent sci-fi conventions.

At a film festival, it would be called ‘creating a buzz.’ Online it gets gamers chatting and spreads planted messages around the online community like a virus.

‘You’ve got to feed the Internet like a hungry animal,’ says Gliserman.

This follows a shoot in southern Ontario, during which producers were at pains to stop fans from intruding.

‘I thought they were bad on Resident Evil [Apocalypse],’ says producer Don Carmody, recalling his previous horror video-game adaptation. ‘There were a lot of attempts to track down the script.’

Carmody disguised the shoot with the working title Centralia to fend off snoopers and cordoned off the outdoor set in Brampton, ON.

Silent Hill shot as a Canada/France coproduction, directed by Christophe Gans (Brotherhood of the Wolf  ) and produced by France’s Samuel Hadida (Good Night and Good Luck, the Resident Evil films) and Carmody. It stars Radha Mitchell (Melinda and Melinda) as a mother who comes to town with her dying daughter in search of a faith healer only to be preyed upon by unspeakable monsters. Eleven-year-old Jodelle Ferland (Tideland), Sean Bean (The Lord of the Rings) and Laurie Holden (Fantastic Four) also star.

The challenge for Gans and screenwriter Roger Avary (Pulp Fiction, Rules of Attraction) was that each fan has a unique experience with the game. Judging by the online chatter, Silent Hill devotees fear the movie will water down the creepy world they know.

‘When we make a movie of the game, we have to deal with expectations that the gamers have,’ says Carmody. ‘They built the world of Silent Hill in their imaginations. And we build a film from our imagination.’

Gans added time and cost to the shoot by using a crane in most shots to reproduce the points of view of the videogame. This included diving camera shots, sometimes passing through removable set parts to imitate video-game maneuvers.

‘Every time a director asks for a crane, I groan. It halts production,’ says Carmody with a sigh.

Silent Hill opens in English and French Canada on some 200 screens on April 21.