Silent Hill
I don’t even know how long I’ve looked forward to this film. The Silent Hill series is one of my favorite gaming franchises of all time, and the first one still stands as quite possibly the scariest experience of my life. When I heard a good director was attached to the film, and I first started seeing screenshots of setpieces, I had very high hopes. I mean, Silent Hill isn’t a bad movie; I saw it twice. I just think that when you look forward to something for so long, there is absolutely no way it can deliver. I’m sure there’s a psychological term for that…that will be your homework.
So yeah…mixed feelings. First things first, if you’re not a fan of the game(s), I really don’t see how you could appreciate the movie on any level. Prior knowledge of the games’ universe fills in all the little gaps that would have the average movie-goer confused. Seeing a “real” Silent Hill is half the enjoyment of the movie, and that would be completely lost on anybody that doesn’t know what Silent Hill is or is about. In fact, if you read a couple reviews online a bit, the majority of critics are bitchy because they have no idea what’s going on.
Now, from interviews I’ve read, Gans is a huge fan of the series, and making the movie was really a labor of love for him. For the most part, he manages to deliver, but falls short in some areas. For one, I have been through the first game at least 30 times, no joke. There is SO much more to the story (and lots that I still don’t understand) that was streamlined for a 2 hour movie that I don’t think the viewer can appreciate the depth of the Silent Hill mythos the way the gamers do. I mean, dig around online a bit and check out just how many plot analyses there are. These games are pretty heavily discussed every time one comes out. In the movie however, there’s even this awkward 5 minute flashback sequence of sorts near the end that attempts to explain exactly what the hell is going on. The games left you to figure that out by yourself, and it keeps the movie from becoming the mind-job it should have been. That said, I also think the movie could have been cut by about 30 minutes, as I found myself getting impatient about an hour in. The game’s atmosphere is almost perfectly captured (even down to some of the same camera tricks), and the town itself is exactly how I would imagine a real-world Silent Hill. The problem is, atmosphere can’t always carry a movie for 2 hours. That’s not to say nothing happens in the entire movie; I just wish more did, and in a shorter span of time.
Oh, this was the biggest disappointment for me: not scary. Maybe that’s a lot to ask, since very few movies have ever genuinely scared me, but at no point was I ever caught off-guard, chilled, creeped out, or even remotely worried. The movie has spot-on visuals, but my senses were never fully engaged; the movie ended up being a very passive experience.
Now that I’ve ripped on it for four paragraphs, let me explain why I saw it twice. The games’ atmosphere is almost perfectly nailed. There’s a lot of really neat stuff going on on-screen…visually, even if nothing is actually really ‘happening’. It’s almost 100% ‘ooh-ahh’ factor for fans. Rose’s first 10 minutes in Silent Hill almost exctly duplicate the first several minutes of the first game, and as far as I could tell, the majority of the score was lifted directly from the games. Anybody that’s played a Silent Hill knows that the music is half the experience. When the first game came out, I had never heard anything like it before, game, movie, or otherwise. The music was off-putting and alienating, and I was glad they kept it for the movie, though it wasn’t featured as prominently. The creature design was done well, if the CG is juuuust a little sub-par, and I have to say for all the hype Pyramidhead got in the weeks leading up to the movie’s release, he certainly disappointed. His first appearance is awesome, but then they sorta forget about him; he only ends up being onscreen for MAYBE a minute total. He also has no relevance to the story, and I feel his potential as a primary villain was overlooked. Oh, I was also excited there was not a sugar-coated ending. In the games’ terminology, the audience gets like a Bad+ ending.
Not that it’s saying much, this is easily the best videogame to movie adaptation ever. I really don’t think there’s any way a fan could be SORELY disappointed. I mean, this is no Resident Evil. Gans is a competent director and was actually stayed true to the excellent source material (maybe to a fault), but (and this is true for nearly all videogames), Silent Hill was not designed for film. It was meant to be experienced on a more interactive level, and the story is meant to slowly fall into place for the gamer over a period of several hours. Gans did what he could, and didn’t fall flat on his face, but in videogame adaptations, something will inevitably be lost in translation.
April 23rd, 2006 at 8:46 pm
Agreed, wholeheartedly. Coming out of the film, I was really happy with what I had seen, and I still am, but the movie did have its fair share of faults that started grating on me the more I thought about it. First and foremost, Gans has brought us the most accurate and effective game-to-screen adaptation yet. However, in doing so, he’s also made me realize that games really should not be made into films. They’re two different mediums that often rely on some of the same tricks in presentation, but not so much in storytelling. Trying to convey the complex, highly esoteric essence of the Silent Hill universe is something that has taken 4 games to do, while still leaving numerous questions unanswered. It’s just not possible for a single feature film to condense all of that backstory and the various subtleties into something that doesn’t become a complete trainwreck. The movie was a total boner-fest for the SH fans, but I have a hard time seeing the average viewer really liking it. The directing, set design, creature design, sound, etc. were all spot-on, and seeing a “real life” representation of Silent Hill and it’s inhabitants had me giggling like a schoolgirl. One complaint though: I would have liked an original score. Every single song in the movie was lifted straight out of one of the first three games. The script and story, on the other hand, were lacking. Dialogue sucked, lots of useless characters and subplots, and the exposition towards the end felt really forced and out of place. The audience is shown a lot of strange/horrific imagery, but none of it is really in context. Those who know the game understand the purpose of the various monsters and what they represent, but without that knowledge, it just seems like the movie throws some freaky shit at the characters then it’s all over and you never see or hear anything about those monsters agin. Pyramid Head, in all his awesomeness, suffered the worst from this. What was his role in the movie? He seemed terribly out of context and the fact that he had all of about 2 scenes made this worse. Some backstory on who the hell he was and a chance to make him come across as more of a threat than just a dude that shows up a couple times would have been nice. The bathroom janitor monster was the only creature who’s existence was really rationalized. Once the witch-burning cult got introduced, I think the story really took a turn for the worst. The first hour or so of the movie had me giddy as a schoolgirl, but things started to drag and my enthusiasm began to wane after that. As an homage to the video game, Gans and co. did a commendable job. Taken on it’s own merits as a film though, I would have to say it was average if not below-average in spots, being redeemed by its aesthetic elements. Supposedly the original cut was 3+ hours. This could either be a bad thing, or the extra time would have allowed for a little more natural plot exposition and the chance to work in some more details that would fly past the non-fan of the game. As it stood, at 2+ hours, the movie did start to drag and could have used some more trimming. The same could be said of “Brotherhood of the Wolf” too, which I thought was about 30 minutes too long, although still an awesome movie. All in all, the movie did an excellent job appealing to the SH fanboy in me, but it wasn’t quite so successful in appealing to the horror film fan in me. I’ll be buying the DVD for sure though (and hoping it has a director’s cut or something), and the fact that it was number 1 at the box office this weekend made me smile. Bottom line: I think Gans direction was fantastic, but Avary’s script was very lacking. A good eye-candy movie, for sure, but the cerebral “wtf”ness of the games’ story just didn’t translate to screen too well. Also, on a positive note, I thought the end credits were pretty slick too. I kept hoping throughout the film that they’d use the song from SH4 though…I don’t remember the name, but it’s a really moody, downbeat vocal song that would have worked nicely over the credits or something. As a Silent Hill fan, I’d give the movie an 8/10. If I were to judge it as a horror movie and I had no experience with the SH universe, I’d probably give it a 6.