Silent Hill - Cheap Thoughts

You often hear how videogame movies suck...they do. Super Mario Bros: Sucks. Max Payne: Sucks Bloodrayne: Sucks (Get it? Vampires? Sucks...no you suck). Usually people will say that the best videogame based movie is Mortal Kombat, but even then they refer to it as just a guilty pleasure type movie, and not a legitimately good movie. I disagree, not the good movie part, but that it is the best videogame based movie, for me, that is 2006's Silent Hill.

*Spoilers Ahead*

Based on the popular Silent Hill Konami series (Specifically the first 3 games) Silent Hill follows the story of Rose as she believes her daughter Sharon has some sort of mental condition, where she sleep walks, has night terrors and hallucinations, all revolving around a town called Silent Hill, eventually she decides to travel there with Sharon to get answers, but finds the entire city abandoned and she is unable to leave, though she loses her daughter in the town, she meets up with a police officer named Cybil in hopes of finding her daughter and a way of leaving the city, escaping and hiding from multiple monsters infesting the city. Eventually they find a cult made up of the former citizens of Silent Hill and tell them the town is cursed by the spirit of a witch who plans on sacrificing Sharon. Eventually the cult betrays the two women and Rose discovers that the citizens of Silent Hill have a long history of witch burning, eventually sacrificing a girl named Alessa and her spirit was split in two, one part haunts Silent Hill while the other was reincarnated into Sharon and the citizens plan on sacrificing Sharon to destroy the monsters, already killing Cybil. In the end, Rose brings Alessa to the church where the sacrifice is to take place, and she takes her vengeance on the townsfolk, and allowing Rose and Sharon to leave Silent Hill finally, and although they return home, they discover they are still in the same reality that Silent Hill exists in, rather than their own reality.

Now those of you who have seen the film might notice I left out something pretty big in the movie, and that would be the subplot of Sean Bean's character (Rose's husband). The reason why I have left this out is because his subplot is completely inconsequential to the rest of the movie, i can understand him being there for the beginning and end of the film but for the rest of the movie he can be taken out entirely and literally nothing will be any different. The only reason why his character was included was studio executive bullshit who felt like there weren't enough men in the film, the main character is female, the child is female, the cop is female, the villain is female, yes, all of the main characters are women, and as a man i want executives to know that i don't give a shit if the main cast is made up of just women; if you're concerned that it's because i won't relate to the situation, you're in fucking Silent Hill, that's not a situation people are likely to experience, but even if they were, i'm sure people would react the same way regardless of whether they were a man or a woman, and that reaction being "Holy shit! This is fucking terrifying!" so as far as I am concerned, Sean Bean wasn't in this movie.

As for the main story itself, it is for the most part based on the original Silent Hill story, but i'll get to the adaptation elements later, as for the film itself, the story does seem quite basic at times and one could argue the pacing can go at the speed of a slug at points, but personally it doesn't bother me all that much, I for one was actually pretty engaged for the most part, I thought the film had great tension building at the start and ended in a great pay off, though I will admit for the middle section of the movie where a lot of the exposition takes place, I found myself getting bored. I've heard some complain that the story gets confusing at times, but I didn't find it to be confusing at all, a hard core religious cult burns a girl who they think is a witch and the spirit of the girl wants revenge, I think it's pretty basic. I also found Alessa's backstory to be incredibly interesting and effective, giving a pretty 3-Dimensional personality to your spirit-like character, which is rarer than you would expect in horror movies, though I wouldn't argue against someone saying the other characters seem a bit too basic, their motivations are understandable but the personalities can be lacking and one could see the cult as being rather one dimensional and i would be one of those who agrees.

The film was directed by Christophe Gans, who while not the greatest director in the world, you cannot say he didn't try with this film. Konami is known for being very protective of their properties and it wasn't until Gans did a 40 minute presentation explaining what Silent Hill meant to him as a fan of the games and what he would do if they sold him the movie rights and it worked. And that is the best thing about the movie, how loyal it remains to the original videogames, the story is based on the original videogame, changing a few things such as character names and the gender of the main character, but apart from that this movie is loyal to an insane degree. Multiple sets were based on levels in the game and they made them as accurate as possible, the monsters are all based on creatures from the first 4 games of the series and a lot of the cinematography (especially near the beginning) are all steady high angle shots in dark corridors, just like in the original videogame. They even use the original score by Akira Yamaoka, and anyone can tell you that the atmosphere of a game, especially a horror game, comes from the score, and it really helps sell the idea that this is Silent Hill. So even if you don't like the movie as a movie, no one can deny that this is an amazing adaptation, in fact i'd say it's probably the most loyal adaptation of a videogame that I have ever seen.

But it's one thing to look at it as a videogame movie, and another to look at it as just a movie, we also have to look at it as a horror movie, and being honest, this is the movies biggest downfall. Now first off the biggest compliment I can give this film is that there are no jump scares, not one, the movie actually tries to scare you through atmosphere and visuals alone, and for that I am always going to be grateful. But on the other hand...the movie isn't scary; it has memorable visuals and an engaging atmosphere, but no scares, and I watched this movie on my own, in the middle of the night with the lights off, and I was never scared, I slept just find that night, I liked the movie and respected a lot of the choices they made, but in the end, if your horror movie isn't scary then how good can it really be? A big reason why I think this is, is because of how scares in a videogame differ from those in a movie. A lot of the Silent Hill creatures show up fairly early in the movie, where Rose is the only character, the monsters hunt her down slowly and she has to quickly find an escape before they attack her, the problem is, with her being the only character, we know she's going to survive and find a way out. But how this scenario works in a videogame, is that we are the main character, we're making the decisions, we have to find a way out, we don't know where the exit is, we don't know if we can make it out of this, that works in a videogame, not in a movie.

I can understand if you don't like this movie, but one thing you can't say is that the movie was bad because of a lack of effort. As an adaptation, it's amazing, as a movie, it's good, as a horror movie, it's disappointing. Putting all of these together I am going to give this film a 7/10.

Oh, and the sequel: sucks.

-Danny