Movie Defense Force: Silent Hill

[Diddy_Mao]

Haven't watched the video yet.

Just taking a quick moment to say I rather liked Silent Hill. Christoph Gans has an eye for the material and the changes he made, while a bit frustrating from the viewpoint of a Silent Hill lore nerd are completely understandable in terms of getting the story and themes across to the uninitiated.
Turning The Order into a sect of pseudo Christian zealots is an acceptable alteration as it avoids a lot of the excessive lore that comes with supernatural cults (who do they worship, how does their culty magic work, why are they worshiping this particular entity, are there other gods and demons....blah blah blah.) Setting it amongst a backdrop of an industrial mining community allows for a lot of the traditional Dark Silent Hill imagery while still playing into the idea of it being a twisted alteration of the world that Alessa feared.

It's not perfect but in terms of big screen adaptations of video games I'll take an imperfect alteration to an existing story over a poorly executed attempt to carbon copy the game narrative into a cinematic experience.

Ok watching the video now.

Back in a mo'

Edit:

Well okay then...glad we agree.

Watching the review and seeing the quick progression of the story reminds me of one of my favorite little design choices in this movie.
Namely that as Rose De Silva progresses through Silent Hill her outfit continues to accrue stains and damage until the once white and off gray outfit she started out with in "foggy" Silent Hill ends up the same rusty brown and crimson mess as the rest of Dark Silent Hill.

I love that.

Lastly, I hope we can all agree that Silent Hill: Revelation was an unwatchable pile of pig shit.

 

[scw55]

I enjoyed the film. But I found the end frustrating.

Spoiler

Felt like nothing was achieved except for the spirit girl laid to rest and the town getting karma'd. I don't expect a happy ending. I just expect a 'fulfilled' narrative. Being trapped between 'two planes' doesn't make sense in the film. Makes sense in His Dark Materials (Universes), but not in this film

 

[JiMin Seo]

http://youtu.be/hW5ND6OysSs

Watch the comparison vid. Say what you will about the movie and the director, but its clear that Christophe Gans actually loved the game and paid his dues. Sure, it fell apart in the end, but SH1 was my favorite game in the series and for a game/movie adaptation to honor that, has my respect.

 

[Mr. Eff_v1legacy]

It's not the worst movie ever, but I don't like it for a few reasons:

Spoiler: Changing characters from the games around.

Making Alessa a demon girl hell-bent on revenge, with Dahlia as her innocent mother; in the game, Dahlia was trying to use Alessa's power to birth the god of the cult, with Alessa wanting no part in it

Spoiler: I found all of the characters surly, unlikeable, and stupid.

Cybil harassing Rose for no good reason, Chris being sour-faced wandering around breaking into buildings and harassing nuns, Rose falling down bumping into things, etc. But the worst, for me, is Rose gleefully killing the cult members at the end of the film. Sure it was justified, but there's no depth to it. No guilt, hesitation, etc.

The inconsequential side story, starring Chris DaSilva. This was a result of the aforementioned tampering with the characters.

Use of monsters from the games that had no business being there. Yes, Pyramid Head was just tossed in, but the nurses are the biggest irritant for me. Why does "darkest nightmare" of a young girl include sexy female humanoids with giant boobs?

Its confirmation of multiple dimensions. In the games, it was always left ambiguous; the film solidified that. It's a nitpick, but it felt like one instance of the film going out of its way to explain everything.

I can't blame the film itself for this one, but the inspiration the later games took from the film, especially Homecoming. I partially attribute the overuse of PH to its use in the film.

That said, the sets are fantastic, the monsters are well-realized (I actually quite like Colin the janitor as well), and the music is used pretty effectively. The nods to the games are always fun to see.

 

[Clunks]

It's not a bad movie, per se. My biggest problems with it are all to do with moments and ideas I perceive as missing the point of the games and the attempted fanservice (I'm one of those guys who gets annoyed when Pyramid Head or the "sexy" nurses show up outside of Silent Hill 2). Beyond that there's some fairly minor tonal issues - occasionally the film shoots for scary and ends up downright silly. Still find it mildly enjoyable and I imagine that if I wasn't a fan of the games I'd probably like it a bit more.

EDIT: Thinking about it, Christopher Gans adapts material the same way Zach Snyder does: with a very keen eye for visuals and surface elements but with little deeper understanding of what the material is actually about and why it works (or at least, little that comes across in the finished work).

 

[Dascylus]

I remember the outcry, I remember renting the DVD, I remember sitting with my friends and laughing about how it was going to be fun to watch this supposed pile of crap.
I also remember the six of us being pretty agreed that it wasn't as bad as everyone had been going on about. In fact I think we even said the words "actually" "pretty" and "good" together in a sentence describing the film.

Now I look at the comments here and see a similar response.
I would like to say it didn't need defending but maybe it did.

My intended closing comment was taken and I'm lazy...

Lastly, I hope we can all agree that Silent Hill: Revelation was an unwatchable pile of pig shit.

 

[Metalrocks]

i also enjoyed the movie. you can clearly see that they tried their best to stick to the source as much as possible. even in the making of the director said that its impossible to be 1:1 to the game. "a movie is a movie, and a game is a game". thats what he said.
he also said that he is a silent hill fan and i think he did a good job capturing the moments we know from the game.

the second movie though, that was really crap.

 

[Blachman201_v1legacy]

To me, there are two major problems that boggles the film down both in regards to faithfulness and pacing (well, one problem in the strictest sense, the other is a side-effect of the first). Both problems that Jim didn't touch upon.

First we had the decision of turning Harry Mason into a woman. The director's justification was more or less that he saw Harry as a rather feminine character because he believed that a father wouldn't go to such lengths to save his daughter, and of course to have that bit of tagged-on mother symbolism ("Mother is God in the eyes of a child"). All in all, it just comes across as dumb and, well, kind of sexist.

This leads to side problem of the scenes with Sean Bean, which consists of him doing unrelated and ultimately pointless things. Scenes which are solely there because it was felt that the film needed a principle male character, a problem that wouldn't be present if Harry hadn't been genderswapped.

 

[ironfist86]

Odd, I didn't even know this one needed defending. One of my friends made me watch it after I scoffed at another video game adaptation by Hollywood and I'm glad that he did. The plot lacks at times but it is more than up for with some incredibly creepy scenes.

 

[Norix596]

When the jazz started while a car spun out in the rain into a haunted town I started getting serious Two Best Friends Play Deadly Premonition flashbacks...

 

[Evonisia]

At the time of watching the film I'd only played Downpour and knew large chunks of the overall plot of Silent Hill, but the film didn't manage to put me off even with it's ending (which was mostly retconned in Revelations anyway), Pyramid Head, the total misuse of the monsters and the Cult appearing far too much. It was a good film, I'd recommend it to none fans.

To be honest, I see more people hating Silent Hill 4: The Room (which isn't that bad) than Silent Hill: The Movie, and Silent Hill: The Retcon Movie.

 

[Rabidkitten]

I had always been under the impression that Silent Hill was of the "better" game films. This being the better of a very shoddy bunch.

 

[Jenny Jones]

Not played the games so can't really see where the "failings" were from that point. As a film...sorry, as a horror film *lowers expectations* it was entertaining for me and had enough creepy and disturbing things in it rather than being GOREFEST IS SCARY!!1!

 

[Trishbot]

The first 15 minutes of Silent Hill 1 on Playstation were more terrifying than the movie, sadly. It mimicked the scenes, almost shot for shot, but didn't get the same level of tension or terror.

 

[kburns10]

I really enjoyed this movie for what it was: a TAKE on Silent Hill. Not meant to be an exact copy of the story line, just based on it. My opinion might not count though since I've only played through 4 mostly.

 

[Safaia]

So I literally just realized that the barb wire rape scene was a homage to the original Evil Dead. Herpa derp.

I remember seeing this in theaters while I was in college. I remember thinking it was okay even if I laughed through the entire third act.

 

[Strazdas]

I liked this movie since it came out. And i like silent hill 2 (though the game is great to experience, a torture to use the mechanics). But you, i seem to remember back in 2008 on Podtoid you tore it to shreds, with same arguments you just brushed of as "Yeah it has that" here.

CapchA: empire state of mind
I certainly hope so.

 

[NihilSinLulz]

I think the main problem of the film, from which all others stemmed, was that it simply did not respect its audience.

The films that inspired the franchise (Lost Highway and Jacob's Ladder) were so effective because of the ambiguity of the plot, protagonist motivations, and antagonists. The first four Silent Hill games followed suit by adopting that ambiguity into their game design with Silent Hill 2 being the glowing example and shining all the brighter for it.

The movie however dumbed everything down to such a degree that its almost insulting. Gone is the old cult whose aims may or may not be noble, replaced by a silly uber puritan group of idiots. The monsters respecting aspect of the psyche have been switched for recognizable series icons in a shameless attempt of fan service.

The worst offender is the plot. Everything is shown. I'm surprised we weren't shown the characters out on a bathroom break given how much the scriptwriter and director didn't trust us to not get confused. In the aforementioned games and movies, large parts of characters' actions weren't shown and the audience was left to figure it out which made for great surreal disorientation. The crowning turd is the ending. That exposition dumb...wow.

I'll agree with the opinion that its not terrible, just resoundingly mediocre, but the question is why even bother with this movie when you can a better 'Silent Hill experience' from much, MUCH better films?

 

[j1015]

I didn't know people hated this film. I loved it.