Movie Defense Force: Silent Hill

Not Lord Atkin

I'm dead inside.
Oct 25, 2008
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I'm still unsure what the popular opinion on this movie is. I saw it before I played Silent Hill 2 and I loved it as a horror movie. Even after playing through Silent Hill 2, I still thought it was a fairly faithful adaptation that managed to balance fan service with being fun to watch. I talked about the movie with people outside the internet; weirdly enough, I don't personally know anyone else who has played any of the games; those who didn't (and most of them don't even know there was a game in the first place) loved the film.

Yet the moment someone mentions the film on the internet, I keep hearing about how dreadful it was. That is in spite of how much praise it got when it came out.

Has anything changed while I wasn't looking?
 

Talvrae

The Purple Fairy
Dec 8, 2009
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I said it before, i say it again...
Silent Hill is not a great Movie... But it's still the best video game movie to date...
 

The_Echo

New member
Mar 18, 2009
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Barring the kneejerk backlash I heard when this movie came out, I've only ever seen people say that they liked Silent Hill. I know I did.

It isn't a fantastic movie. But it is a good one, with bonus points for being a good video game adaptation (something that basically never happened before or since).
 

IamLEAM1983

Neloth's got swag.
Aug 22, 2011
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I kinda like that movie, honestly, for much of the reasons mentioned in the video. I loved how memorizing a floor plan - a very video game-y activity if there ever was one - becomes a central plot point. I loved the creature designs, and I loved that Christophe Gans at least tried to take the already convoluted mess which is your typical Silent Hill storyline and more or less lay it out for the laymen in the audience to understand. It wasn't perfect and yes, the ending does fall apart - but the movie was otherwise tonally perfect and a much better video game adaptation than the inexplicably popular Milla Jovovich vehicles which are the "Resident Evil" movies.
 

Nooners

New member
Sep 27, 2009
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An age gate on a Jim Sterling video? Is he being Technically Pornography again?

Oh, well, maybe it's this Pyramid Head guy that all the Silent Hill fans seem to love. Wonder what makes him so speci--HOLY CRAP! GET HIM AWAY FROM ME!
 

mrnomas

New member
May 17, 2010
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I've never played the games but I know the basic premise. With that knowledge, I was able to follow the movie pretty well on the first viewing and I liked it. The second? Not so much.
 

Fiz_The_Toaster

books, Books, BOOKS
Legacy
Jan 19, 2011
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I remember enjoying it a little when I saw it in theatres, and I've seen it many times after it left as well.

It's not a great adaptation, but it did the job. I never thought it was scary though. That scene with Pyramid Head tossing the skin at the church doors was my favorite part in the whole movie. The nurse scene I thought was a little silly though.

RJ 17 said:
All I really remember about the movie was the barbed-wire tentacle rape at the very end, but taking it as purely just a "scary movie", I recall finding it pretty enjoyable.
Fun fact: I remember making a terrible joke, of which I won't repeat here in the open, when that happened and a friend of mine that went to the movie theatre with me to see it just about died laughing.

I'm a horrible horrible person.
 

Proverbial Jon

Not evil, just mildly malevolent
Nov 10, 2009
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SH2 is my favourite game of all time too! (Says several hundred other people.) I had only played Silent Hill 2 when I saw the movie and I actually really enjoyed it.

But after I had actually played the rest of the series, including the original PS1 Silent Hill, I realised how utterly wrong the movie had been. I'm sad that they didn't believe a male lead could carry the film and we got stuck with Sean Bean's boring side story. Dahlia being a goodie goodie mother was a big stab in the back for me. I also missed Kaufmann and his involvement with White Claudia and possibly Lisa Garland, easily the most interesting part of the game. However, it's still the best video game movie adaptation I've ever seen and quite enjoyable to watch.

My biggest problem is with how much the games have started taking from the movie itself. I'm looking at you Homecoming, you giant pile of turd.
 
Apr 28, 2008
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Wait, what? From what I remember hearing about it it was a decent film that payed its respects to the game fairly well and was a fine movie in its own right.

Never saw it or played the games, just going by what I remember hearing back in the long-before time of 2006.
 

Remus

Reprogrammed Spambot
Nov 24, 2012
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I'm with some people here. I saw this movie and never thought it really needed defending. Sure Alyssa was changed from a reality-altering ghost to a cenobite tied to a bed, but with the way she was presented, how could she be anything else in the movie? The inspiration for her design, as was pointed out, stems from The Room, where halfway through you find a crispy wooden dummy in a wheelchair, again taking elements from many games and plugging them into a single film. And yes, Pyramid Head was originally a walking phallus in SH2, but he was also presented as a kind of medieval executioner of the damned, which fits this film nicely. Some people like to complain for the sake of complaining, crying "THAT'S NOT CANON!" I say pull that stick out and enjoy a decently faithful film adaptation of a videogame property. BTW, the end credits, with "You're Not Here" playing through a tour of dark, monster-filled halls, I'd watch the movie for the credits alone.
 

vxicepickxv

Slayer of Bothan Spies
Sep 28, 2008
3,126
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I remember the only complaint I had about Silent Hill was immediately after the motorcycle wreck. How is she walking, and how did she only get a cut on the inside of the helmet?
 

Makabriel

New member
May 13, 2013
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Yeah, it looks like everyone that liked the film seem to hang around here. I liked it to. Even had a twist that I didn't see coming (and that's a hard one to pass over me).
I was sure they weren't going to burn her alive, or she was going to come back. One or the other. Nope, I was wrong.
 

PunkRex

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Feb 19, 2010
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I havn't played the games so certain things in the movie confused me, why could the cop also enter Silent Hill, she seemed legit good guy?
 

Trishbot

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May 10, 2011
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The film's cult is the biggest problem. They went from genuinely disturbing, scary, and mysterious in the games to... well, hilarious. I just cannot listen to "She's a witch! Burn her!" without conjuring up giggles at Monty Python's Holy Grail.

The 2/3rds of the movie works, and works well. But things take an immediate down-turn once the town is literally swarming with cult members, opening up plotholes and sucking out the isolation and loneliness that practically defines the franchise.

But things pretty much came to a grinding halt after the otherwise-brilliant Nurse hallway scene where Rose runs through a door and... "Congratulations Rose. You did it. You won".... a baffling and unnecessary exposition dump, poorly edited backstory, rushed explanation for events, and setting events in motion for the finale that forgoes subtle, ambient horror (that defined the better parts of the film) in favor of full-on guts and gore and shock value brutality, with none of the psychology or emotional resonance that the initial games carried with them in spades.

It's 2/3rds of a good movie marred by 1/3rd disaster... which, as a Silent Hill fan, will forever bug me at how close we got, yet so far away.

.... And then Silent Hill: Revelations happened.
 

JohnHayne

New member
Apr 28, 2013
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PunkRex said:
I havn't played the games so certain things in the movie confused me, why could the cop also enter Silent Hill, she seemed legit good guy?
Explanations below.

If you take the canon material, Silent Hill, as a setting, has it own story arcs.

The first arc takes place before and during the first game: the city is a place of power and the nightmares of one powerfull person (Alessa) changed the place in a dramatic event.

The second arc starts after the ending of the first game. For reasons unknown to me, Silent Hill, besides being a place of power, becomes a magnet to a certain type of person. That's why broken people a drawn to this city.

The third arc is the growth of the area of influence of the city, which is probably caused by the resurgence of The Cult (Silent Hill's local religion) in the following games (SH 3 and 4).

So, based on the first story arcs, more or less shown in the movie, it's not about being good or bad, but being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
 

Canadamus Prime

Robot in Disguise
Jun 17, 2009
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I haven't seen this film, but now I kinda want to. However not having ever played a Silent Hill game I don't really care how faithful it is to the source material.
 

JohnHayne

New member
Apr 28, 2013
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Trishbot said:
The 2/3rds of the movie works [...]

It's 2/3rds of a good movie marred by 1/3rd disaster...
But I ask you this: does it work as a horror movie? Or is just a good thriller with supernatural elements?

For me that's the major fail of the movie: not being scary.