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I was not disappointed. This is a hard R film. Do not bring little kids or squeamish people. Seriously. I am going to try and avoid spoilers because if you are a an SH games fan then you should see this film.
Like all movies it had it’s good and bad points. The acting or lack of it was a real shame. The little girl was terrible. She didn’t know how to deliver a single convincing line. She sounded like a kid playing pretend with a singsong schoolyard voice. No one took the time to clue her in on how to act.
I would have liked to have seen more top name actors in it. If you do see it there was a part that was made for Allison Hannigan, (Willow, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) but she wasn’t in it. See if you can pick it out. The male actor that played the husband was a Gerard Depardu look alike. The actress that played Rose the female lead, was the spitting image of the girl form Silent Hill 3 only a bit older. I thought that would be the tie in. She even wore the skirt with the boots.
This wasn’t a movie that took license with the franchise like the Lord of The Rings movies screen plays that threw the book out the window. Instead it attempts to tie in all the loose ends from the games. With a little piece of SH 2 here and a bit of SH 3 there. It would have been better if they had taken the games as a trilogy the way that the Resident Evil movies did. The RE games gave you plenty of back-story, sometimes more than you wanted to know as you click through monotonous screens of it.
Not with Silent Hill, in the games you rarely know what the hell is going on. But that is the difference right there. It is really a study in the difference between a Japanese horror production and an American horror flick. Japanese horror films have mystery in them, the supernatural remains unexplained. In an American flick you have happy endings (I’m not telling either way if the Silent Hill movie did.) You have heros and the story line comes to a tidy conclusion. They did do that with this movie . I walked away feeling somewhat satisfied. “Ok so that’s what that was…” If it had been a movie with a Japanese screen writer and director it would have had more flavor to it. It was better than the Ring movies but not better than Ringu the original that those movies came from.
It dragged. The beginning dragged on and on. I kept waiting for something to happen. I had mixed feelings about Rose’s character, and apparently so did the director. She spent far too much of the flick handcuffed and helpless. I want to yell at the screen “pick up a frigging board or a pipe or something to defend yourself with!” One minute she is stuffing a stiletto down her boot and the next she is dropping her weapon down a hole like a dumb - ass. They lost out on all the feminist points with me there. Even thought there were several female characters. Typical. If women appear in a horror flick the cliche is that they are either insane or helpless and preferably both. The best thing about Silent Hill 3 is how the girl is resourceful and plucky in spite of the bloodied wall surroundings, and the noise that bears down oppressively. The movie went in the wrong direction with that important factor.
I guess in video games there is the problem of guns and ammo left lying conveniently around. Instead of that they introduced an unnecessary character. That was a useless device. The female cop chased Rose through the movie. Again she starts out tough and ends up more freaked out than Rose. There was ambivalence about just how strong these women were going to be allowed to be.
Another problem was that there were too many actors on the screen at the same time. Silent Hill is a single player game. One of the things that makes it frightening is the loneliness and the aspect of self reliance and ingenuity that the player has to develop in order to survive. There was none of that there. Rose was weak, and not very smart. That was not only disappointing, but it was also off base to the spirit of the games.
The monsters were sufficiently gross. There were several moments of surprise that really got the packed audience going. There was a great deal of tension and suspense that glued you to your seat while you anticipated the reveal that would explain finally what the deal was with this town. It does. Now weather we as a community of survival horror gamers and horror movie fans are satisfied with the particular tidy package that they made out of it is going to be hotly debated I’m sure.
I can’t say that the movie sucked. Originally when I read about the script I was concerned that it would be a watered down, dumbed down pale thing unworthy of the name Silent Hill. It was strong on blood and shock. I didn’t get scared by it because I knew what to expect. But the rest of the audience was freaking and tweaking left and right. It was Silent Hill and they should be.
Aside from the bad acting, lousy directing and unnecessary characters like the husband and the cop, the movie wasn’t terrible. I was relieved. As far as game to movies go it was more faithful to the original material than many of the other movies that suffered from the video game movie curse.
The story line was derivative, and a horror flick fan could say that the plot came from that stock in trade. There were some twists that were genuinely horrible and original. The song at the end was great to hear.
At least I came home and wasn’t totally pissed off by it. If you like the games go see it. It was good enough for me to recommend it. I did observe that some of the women leaving the theater were quiet white and pale. There was even one incident of dry heaves. All in all I wasn’t let down by it. Go see, let’s talk.
I give the Silent Hill movie an 8 out of 10.
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