Movie Defense Force: Silent Hill

[Drauger]

I'm kind of sad to see this movie here because I love it, for me it's a great movie , when it's on cable I always see it, and I do recommend it to people that don't know shit about the game.

 

[KingWein22]

I enjoyed both movies. They, at least, try to stay to the games as much as possible. Sure, they did a # of liberties in both, but to have the one actress in the 2nd one look as close to Heather Mason as possible, I thought, was really well done. Both are on my guilty pleasure list (along with Street Fighter, Super Mario Bros).

 

[attackshark]

"hi. my name is attackshark, and i think Silent Hill is pretty okay."

 

[Akytalusia]

this was a bad movie? i liked it the whole time, and agree with your points.

 

[RJ 17]

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.

When I saw it getting set up I was like "No frickin' way are they REALLY gonna---ok, yeah, they did just go there..."

 

[shrekfan246]

To say that Silent Hill the movie is good because it has the aesthetics, the pacing, music and camera angles is like saying that a game is great because the graphic looks nice, even if the gameplay sucks. Just saying...

Erm... except there's a big difference, because the aesthetics, pacing, and camera angles are mostly down to the direction, so if the direction of the film is good there's at least a reasonable chance the film will be good. Whereas with a video game, the direction of the cutscenes would never be able to save horrible, tedious, boring, or broken gameplay.

So, is SH:tM watchable? Sure. Can you have fun with it? Yes. Is it any good? Well, depends on who you ask.

One thing is sure: It has a lot of flaws...

You've just described... well, everything ever. Because in your own words,

you can have fun with anything, depends entirely on personal taste.

OT: I've never seen it or really put any time into the games because I'm not the biggest fan of horror unless I'm in the proper mood, but I don't recall generally seeing a lot of hatred being flung at the first Silent Hill film. Here and there, sure, but it seemed about even with the people who liked it. Though, that may be because I only really caught the discussions years after the fact. Who knows.

 

[xPixelatedx]

The only problem I have with the movie is they ruined the 'other word transition'... by giving it a transition. In the first games, going to the other world was a mind-fuck. That's why it's was scary! In the movie it's the cgi version of 'BOOGEDY BOOGEDY BOO!". It's so retarded it isn't even funny. Whats worse, is once the Silent Hill games turned to shit, they adopted this terrible design choice... as if to facilitate they knew they were now shit.

But yeah, otherwise a great game based movie, with VERY detailed and recognizable enemies and locations. I am still impressed with how accurate the school was.

 

[plugav]

Yeah, it's pretty. If they'd pay as much attention to the plot as they did to the visuals, we might have gotten a good horror movie instead of a passable one.

Still, it's better than Silent Hill: Revelations (not as pretty, twice as dumb).

 

[Rufus Shinra]

As many others, I'm quite surprised to see this movie here. It's probably the best VG adaptation I've seen (and I've seen many... Mario, Wing Commander, Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, etc., which were quite cringe-worthy or so bad it's good) and I never played a SH game before.

 

[JohnHayne]

To say that Silent Hill the movie is good because it has the aesthetics, the pacing, music and camera angles is like saying that a game is great because the graphic looks nice, even if the gameplay sucks. Just saying...

Erm... except there's a big difference, because the aesthetics, pacing, and camera angles are mostly down to the direction, so if the direction of the film is good there's at least a reasonable chance the film will be good. Whereas with a video game, the direction of the cutscenes would never be able to save horrible, tedious, boring, or broken gameplay.

My point is: art direction cannot redeem the bad stuff in a movie, the same way nice graphics (not cutscenes, but graphics in general) cannot redeem bad gameplay.

Take what Yahtzee calls "spunkgargleweewee": FPS with cutting edge graphics with boring gameplay. Fun? it can be, but it in the end they are bad games.

It's like saying: "Man, that story made no sense, plot holes all over the place, half of the cast was a joke, but, boy! that art director! Oh my! And that soundtrack! What a good movie"

 

[JohnHayne]

And also, minor point, but that child actor is awful. Every moment with that little kid on screen is like nails on chalkboard in my brain.

"It was criticized by fans of the video games for not being enough like the video games"

I criticized it for being a completely wretched horror movie, and that doesn't change even if you take out the part where it shits all over a beloved game franchise.

I remember her from the Kingdom Hospital tv series. She did ok then, but in SH she was not good at all.

"...uses original game tunes"

The music in this movie is the biggest thing I hate about it. It disgusts me to my very core, and whenever I hear people offer the cursory "well at least the music is good" I facepalm. Having a good sound track is not the same thing as having good music in a movie, people. Watchmen: great sound track, does not understand anything about how music is supposed to be used to establish or heighten the tone of a scene. This movie has it even worse because the music is uses already existed as something that was meant for a very specific type of scene to establish a very specific type of mood, and throwing it around at random across the scenes in this movie not only doesn't fit the music, but at times it actively ruins the intention of the tone the movie is trying to set. Every time this fucking film used Angela's theme for Cheryl, I questioned what on earth the sound dudes on this movie must have been smoking, and I totally called that they'd use the opening song of Silent Hill 3 for the credits because that would have been the perfect god damn cherry on the suck cake.

Completely agree on this one. It's like they put the game sound track in a shotgun barrel and shoot at the movie timeline and call it the day.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

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.

When I saw it getting set up I was like "No frickin' way are they REALLY gonna---ok, yeah, they did just go there..."

That's probably why I said what I said because I was surprised they went there. One hell of a way to die though.

I will say what was kinda funny was that when that scene was happening some of the girls in the theatre crossed their legs. I know my friend and I just watched on uncomfortably....I had another horrible comment, but I don't want to get in trouble so I will just let it die.

 

[Rakschas]

i dont think the movie needs defending. it could have stood on its own without taking the name of silent hill, but it did and rightfully so, because as jim said, it was aestheticaly very close to the early installments of the video game.
were there inconsistencies in terms of "silent hill lore"? absolutely. then again, those inconsistencies only reveal themselves to hardcore fans of the games and the director took the artistic liberty to rather include some things that make some real impression on the screen rather than leave them out for lore continuities sake. im glad the movie turned out as good as it did, i liked it very much.

 

[BurningWyvern90]

Yeah, I pretty much agree with all of those points. Then again, I watched it before I ever actually played any of the games, even though I was familiar with the stories. I don't know if my opinion will have changed now that I have played them, but I would guess probably not. I enjoyed it, and in my mind if you can enjoy a movie, it's done its job, no matter how good or bad it may actually be. I mean, hell, that seems to be the principle SciFi Channel is operating on these days, and it seems to be working.

And anyway, next to Silent Hill: Revelations...

One of my friends, who hates horror but saw the first Silent Hill (through the gaps in her fingers...when they weren't completely covering her eyes) got talked into going with us, and by the end she was laughing her ass off with the rest of us. It's been a while since I've seen a movie that God-awful in a movie theater and not on, say...SciFi.

 

[Drummodino]

I... actually really enjoyed Silent Hill. I haven't played the games but I thought it was a genuinely decent horror flick.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Having never played any of the games when I saw this, the movie scared the shit out of me. Plus, I didn't need to worry about it butchering the cannon because I knew nothing about it. This is such an underrated movie.

 

[Vausch]

Nyeeeehhh I have a hard time with this one.

Taken as its own, the movie CAN be a good horror film. However, its pacing gets gutted thanks to the Sean Bean scenes that do nothing for the movie and the only reason they're in there is because the studio said "We need a male lead too". Now they could have just put in Bean as Harry, taken Rose out, and with that Cybil would have had a more important role, but no. Gotta be stupid.

Plus, it's the fanboy in me that just cringes when I see the monsters. Yes, they look great, but they don't belong in an adaptation of Silent Hill. I mean if you'd just buttoned the nurse's tops, bam. You got them right. But no, gotta make 'em the big-titted bobble-head ones from 2. Same with the lying figure. In fact, with all the monsters they had why didn't they just make it an adaptation of Silent Hill 2? If you're going to take all the monsters from the second game, just make a movie out of the second game!

Then there's the cult being witch-burners. Why? I mean when did that stuff happen? I'm pretty sure the feds would've had something to say about that.

Then there's the "fan-service" thing. When a movie makes nods to something like they did here, I feel more like they're going "See? We did it right! We didn't ruin it cuz we put this in here!".

I dunno, I look too hard at it and my judgement of having to compare it to the source material makes me unable to like it so well. "There have been worse adaptations" doesn't fly for me either. It's like saying the rhubarb pie was a closer adaptation to the apple pie than the chocolate creme was to the strawberry. You still did it wrong when the ingredients and recipe were plainly in front of you. I give points for effort but that was a ridiculous mistake.