Was Silent Hill: Revelation really that bad? What about the first movie?

[Venom 3135]

Well, from the title, most of you are probably sitting there thinking "Yes. It was awful".

But I wanna talk about why you feel that way.

I watched Silent Hill about two years ago now and I actually thought it was pretty decent. Good atmosphere, decent films, cool monsters, really well done setting etc etc.
Then, I watched Silent Hill: Revelation a couple of nights ago. From all of the reviews, I really expected the worst film I'd ever seen. But y'know what? I didn't hate it. By no means was it a good film, but I didn't think it was that bad either.

It had some mildly unsettling moments, it had some pretty decent scenes and I thought it was pretty creative too. There was some serious potential behind it. At the same time, some of the scenes were just...silly..., which ruined the feel a bit. The setting was ok, but not as good as the original. The story was ridiculous, there were a lot of low IQ moments (seriously, did she really need to untie him in the room? She couldn't have wheeled him out first?) and Pyramid Head was misused again. The pacing was wrong and it wasn't scary as a result.

Despite all of this though, I felt that the potential and the ideas, as well as all of the references to the games made it a better film than it was given credit for.

I know most of you will probably disagree, but I'm curious. What did you guys think about the two Silent Hill films?

 

[Evonisia]

I thought the first Silent Hill film was pretty good, besides a few flaws such as not being scary, Pyramid Head being misused, portraying the Order as mad witch burners rather than actual Cultists, bad portrayal of monsters and generally not staying true to the game. Still, it was pretty good in it's atmosphere, characters (to an extent), visual effects, editing and music (though most of it is just SH2 and SH1 recycled).

The second film was... ok. I didn't like how they upgraded Heather's dad to a major plot character rather than his minor, but nonetheless important role in the game. The settings were a little misused, they upgraded Vincent from small character to male LOVE interest. Silent Hill's not about romance, even Silent Hill 2 did not put emphasis on the sexual or emotional tension between James and his Lady Friend that much. It also is even more distant from the game than the first film was to Silent Hill 1. And the retconning, oh the retconning. I could basically just nitpick it from start to finish and still have more things to complain about, so I'll list some positives. The enviroments were nice, the characters aren't too embarrassing (except for Harry and Vincent I mean really), Monster design is nice, if a bit underused and it appeared to pay tribute to the original's game's setting even if briefly. Oh one more major complaint, what happened to Heather's sarcasm, that's a big part of her character dammit!

 

[Venom 3135]

Well, In regards to the first film, I agree with your points, except I thought the monster portrayal (mostly the ash babies and the monster that shot acid from it's chest. I don't know their names, sorry) was ok. Also, the fact that it didn't stay true to the games didn't bother me. While I loved the game, the film is a film and shouldn't necessarily be entirely tied to it's source material. Although it's a game adaption, I think it should have some freedom.

Again, the fact that it veers from the source material is fine by me, to an extent. Like you said, the romance thing was kind of stupid. I think the whole idea of Silent Hill as a place is loneliness, so adding a love interest takes from that. The retconning was terrible and the creativity and monster design wasn't used enough in the film. As you say, I could list problem upon problem, but I think there were good things going on. I think the reviews were generally quite unfair.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

First Silent Hill was OK. It did have very good atmosphere, the cinematography was gorgeous, they captured some of the feel of the game/s and the monster design was very good while keeping CG to a minimum, which is how I like my CG. It's also probably one of the few movies to pass Bechdel's Test without cheating around it. On the downside, the plot makes squat sense. I've learned by heart to say that SH1 is about a town whose religious cult sacrificed a little psychic girl to summon some sort of apocalypse but because of a combo of the girl's psychic powers and the town's own "gods" the area becomes cursed so that whoever enters it is confronted with his/her own personal demons as extrapolated from their guilty/phobic subconscious, even if the game never explicitly states so. You can imagine that, even if the film is going to stick by that story, it's going to be just as confusing just by being loyal to the source material. There's also a number of confusing subpots involving the Mark of Samael, the White Claudia trafficking and a bunch of stuff that doesn't add up and is ditched by the following continuity (Silent Hill 2 was so good, I think, because it discarded all the bullshit and focused on a personal, relate-able journey). The movie itself has an unbearable and boring subplot involving "Harry" and Officer Gucci, which feels like filler because it's EXACTLY THAT (their scenes were added because the execs producing the film wanted more male characters).

Second movie was subpar, straight-to-DVD quality stuff. It also suffers from the same criticism I would make of SH3, which is that it makes even less sense if you aren't familiar with SH1 to begin with. The characters of Leonard and Claudia get such little screentime you never even begin to understand what's their motivation in anything. Pyramid Head is overused as hell and still remains out of place. But I started disliking the movie the minute it started. You know how it begins, much like the game, with Heather running around a amusement park in a dream? Except it was shot and scored like we were watching some freaking heavy metal videoclip, which killed the mood the rest of the movie was going for later.

EDIT: Another thing I didn't like about Revelations was the teen feel. The high school at the beginning of the game. Name dropping Facebook and such. The Vincent love interest. The chick that gets killed by the CG spider halfway through. I dunno, it had a modern-day slasher feel going on, like we were watching Jason X or something. Didn't like it.

 

[Venom 3135]

First Silent Hill was OK. It did have very good atmosphere, the cinematography was gorgeous, they captured some of the feel of the game/s and the monster design was very good while keeping CG to a minimum, which is how I like my CG. It's also probably one of the few movies to pass Bechdel's Test without cheating around it. On the downside, the plot makes squat sense. I've learned by heart to say that SH1 is about a town whose religious cult sacrificed a little psychic girl to summon some sort of apocalypse but because of a combo of the girl's psychic powers and the town's own "gods" the area becomes cursed so that whoever enters it is confronted with his/her own personal demons as extrapolated from their guilty/phobic subconscious, even if the game never explicitly states so. You can imagine that, even if the film is going to stick by that story, it's going to be just as confusing just by being loyal to the source material. There's also a number of confusing subpots involving the Mark of Samael, the White Claudia trafficking and a bunch of stuff that doesn't add up and is ditched by the following continuity (Silent Hill 2 was so good, I think, because it discarded all the bullshit and focused on a personal, relate-able journey). The movie itself has an unbearable and boring subplot involving "Harry" and Officer Gucci, which feels like filler because it's EXACTLY THAT (their scenes were added because the execs producing the film wanted more male characters).

Second movie was subpar, straight-to-DVD quality stuff. It also suffers from the same criticism I would make of SH3, which is that it makes even less sense if you aren't familiar with SH1 to begin with. The characters of Leonard and Claudia get such little screentime you never even begin to understand what's their motivation in anything. Pyramid Head is overused as hell and still remains out of place. But I started disliking the movie the minute it started. You know how it begins, much like the game, with Heather running around a amusement park in a dream? Except it was shot and scored like we were watching some freaking heavy metal videoclip, which killed the mood the rest of the movie was going for later.

EDIT: Another thing I didn't like about Revelations was the teen feel. The high school at the beginning of the game. Name dropping Facebook and such. The Vincent love interest. The chick that gets killed by the CG spider halfway through. I dunno, it had a modern-day slasher feel going on, like we were watching Jason X or something. Didn't like it.

It's funny you mention the Harry parts of the first Silent Hill. I always thought that in the film they were kind of pointless, but I really wouldn't have minded if he had his own film and he considered similar events to those that Rose experienced, although I really liked the protagonist in the first Silent Hill.

I think that the story of the second film was it's greatest downfall. It made zero sense. It was just stupid really. I watched the first two minutes of the film and turned it off. I watched it again the next morning with my dad in the room, watched up to the four minute mark, saw that he was watching, got embarrassed and turned it off. When I watched the rest of it later though, I realized how much potential it had.

The teen thing the film had going on was stupid, but I tried to overlook it.

 

[Diddy_Mao]

Divorcing myself entirely as a fan of the games here because I think a good adaptation should be able to stand on it's own.

Silent Hill was a flawed but entertaining horror flick. It told a fairly tight story of an adopted child being drawn to her home town by supernatural causes with her parents looking to rescue her and it wrapped the whole affair up nicely with the subplot involving the The Order and Alessa. It might leave some folks a little confused about the how and why of certain things but the core concept was simple enough to understand.

Silent Hill: Revelation by comparison, is an unfocused train wreck.

The contrivances made to explain why Heather was able to escape the Dark World but Rose wasn't are just godawful and don't make any kind of sense.

The core plot of the Order somehow surviving their rusty barbed wire demon murder and returning to hunt down Heather gets muddied when combined with the motivations of The Order's leader.

The whole bit in the asylum with Vincent's grandfather is a random plot point that goes nowhere and adds nothing to the story, and all of the Dark World set pieces in the school and mall don't fit in with the established setting of the movies and don't serve any point to the current story.

At the end of the day I think the biggest problem is that they tried to make a movie that somewhat closely follows the plot of Silent Hill 3 but needed to pick up where the first movie left off. Unfortunately since first movie changed The Order into a group of puritanical witch burning zealots their motivations don't fit in at all with their motivations pulled from the plot of SH3 where The Order acts as a Demon worshiping cult.