Silent Hill....there is hope

by: Average Joe 2 years, 5 months, 5 days, 17 hours, 46 minutes ago

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I am a big fan of the Konami series "Silent Hill". Games like "Resident Evil" or "Devil May Cry" that have that horror-action combo have just always appealed to me, so it’s only natural that “Silent Hill” (which is like playing a horror film) spark my interest as well. Having played all of the "Silent Hill" titles, I can honestly say that when I heard they were adapting this into a film, my first reaction was, well....less than positive.

In my opinion Hollywood has pretty much killed off any hope of making a decent Resident Evil movie. The first one was terrible, and the second one made me think that they just had extra cash lying around and didn’t know what to do with it (that means it was bad folks). Hollywood has been trying to turn video games into movies for as long as I can remember. They tried in 1993 with "Super Mario Bros" and failed. They tried again in 1994 with "Street Fighter" and failed even worse. In 2001 we saw SOME promise for the genre when "Tomb Raider" starring 1/2 of the “Brangelina” duo—Angelina Jolie. I mean at least they had some decent casting right? "Tomb Raider" and it’s sequel "Tomb Raider 2" were decent, but definitely nothing mind blowing...definitely better than any other video game inspired film before it.

Now here we are in 2006, 3 years removed from the last installment of the “Tomb Raider” series with fans of the genre hungry for another video game turned movie to hold them over until we get the Peter Jackson produced big screen adaption of “HALO”. That film is "Silent Hill".

Based on the popular video game series from Konami, "Silent Hill" takes the original character of Rose (Radha Mitchell) and throws her into the all too familiar world filled with zombies, demonic children, and of course a guy named Pyramid Head who wields a big ass sword that he drags behind him. The story centers around Rose, her husband Christopher (Sean Bean), and their adopted daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland), who often sleepwalks, screaming the mysterious location’s name when found.

After a particularly disturbing episode, Rose decides to find the West Virginia ghost town and try to jog loose whatever trauma Sharon may have suppressed since being abandoned as an infant—the only problem is that Silent Hill has been “closed” since 1974, when a charcoal fire—that’s still smoldering underground—killed most of the inhabitants. The constant “snow"-fall is in fact ash—hence the road is sealed off to keep out would be “tourists”.

Knocked out in a car accident upon arrival, Rose awakes to find Sharon missing. Frantically searching, Rose soon discovers something is very wrong here—as when emergency sirens announce periodic reality-shifts into a subterranean world of grotesque zombies, devouring cockroaches, and as I mentioned before—the one known as Pyramid Head.

Rose tormented by sporatic glimpses of a child who may or may not be Sharon and is soon joined by a local policewoman Cybil Bennett (Laurie Holden). Later they meet Anna (Tanya Allen), and make their entree to a group of religious fanatics led by Christabella (Alice Krige). For Rose to rescue Sharon, she must fight monsters and religious nutcases plus satisfy the vengeance needs of her daughter’s evil doppelganger (sounds intense huh?).

On the surface, "Silent Hill" is at least a decent horror movie. Now add in the fact that it’s based on a video game and it makes it....well, a decent “video game movie”. What I really liked about this film was that the game’s imagery, this grayish-black small town of empty streets, semi-collapsed buildings and dank interiors was beautifully re-created by production designer Carol Spier and collaborators. It’s pretty obvious from the trailers that the film’s real strength comes in how visually appealing the it is from start to finish.

The plot of the film threw me at times, and seemed a bit “choppy” in places, and there were certain times I found myself rolling my eyes thinking “oh geeze” from certain bits of dialogue. However aside from the few negative points I found, "Silent Hill" really does do a good job of bringing you into this mysterious town and giving you enough clues so you can figure out just what really happened in 1974.

Personally I enjoyed this film, and I’ll even go on record as saying this is probably the best video game inspired film I have ever seen. Sure it has it’s low points, and the ending was a bit hard to understand (many people in the audience walked out asking “ok so what just happened?"), but as a whole “Silent Hill” does prove that Hollywood is capable of producting quality films based off of video games. Fans of the games are sure to find at least something worth while, and regular movie-goers are bound to be impressed by the stunning visuals if nothing else.