Silent Hill

A little more than seven years ago when the first Silent Hill game was released for the Playstation, curiosity and hype drove me to to rent it. As a rule, I don't generally go in for "survival horror" games. Resident Evil had failed to capture my interest in all but the most technical aspects.

I remember being told by magazine reviewers that this game was extremely frightening and unnerving at times, but I didn't really believe it until I sat down and started playing it. The first 10 minutes of the game were some of the most mortifying that I have ever spent with a controller in my hand. The developers of this game really knew how to get under your skin and keep you jumping at shadows.

I finished Silent Hill in one night - eager to bring the whole thing to some sort of closure so I could sleep a little easier. I have never picked up any of the Silent Hill sequels, but if they're anything like the first one, I'm sure they're intimately frightening.

When I saw the trailer for the Silent Hill movie for the first time last year, I identified it instantly from the foggy atmosphere and the abandoned car on the mountainous highway.

As with any game-to-movie review, I feel obliged to mention all of the awful game-become-movies that have proceeded it like Super Mario Bros. movie, the Street Fighter movie, to tell you how much better this one is by comparison blah blah blah. Instead, however I'm using this as an opportunity to bag on the horribly awful pseudo-director Uwe Boll. Any film he touches usually ends up being crap because he has a deeply rooted fundamental misunderstanding of what video games are all about, and seems to have read the Cliffs Notes of film making instead of employing any actual talent. Thankfully he had nothing to do with Silent Hill, and it shows in the fact that it's actually a good movie.

Firstly I would recommend against anyone under the age of 17 seeing this film, and even then, don't go see it alone.

The Silent Hill movie only deviated from the story of the game in minor respects, and then it was obviously because of the time limitation. Even so it weighed in at just over 2 hours. It's a little slow to get started, but when it does, you're thrust into a confusing and horrifying tour of the ghost town Silent Hill.

The special effects were top-notch but never became the focus of the film. It seems that Hollywood is learning that special effects are supposed to help the movie not be the movie. Filled with visceral imagry, gore and unnervingly remorseless bad guys, no horror fan should be disappointed. Some of the sequences seem to employ the same techniques as recent Japanese horror films like Ringu and Juon, where the undead are made to move in ways that your brain tells you on some subconscious level just isn't right. This unsettling effect is coupled with unabashed carnage for a well-rounded scare. To top it all off there is an underlying tale of secret sin, retribution and a very confused commentary on the nature of good and evil.

A couple of aspects that detracted from my enjoyment were the fact that all of the principal characters in the movie were female. I suppose it's my male-centric mind making something out of nothing, after all there are plenty examples of movies where all of the principal characters are male, and they don't even make me bat an eye. It just seems odd to me.

I was delighted, however that the filmmakers resisted the urge to include sexuality in this story. The main supporting character is a busty blond policewoman with with a buzz cut that just screams out that she's as buch as a lumberjack, but this was all window dressing as far as the story went.

The story attempts to tell a morality tale from a decidedly secular point of view. When agnostics start getting preachy, it's hard not to laugh as they make comically flawed moral judgements based on absolutely nothing. One line in particular still makes me laugh when I think about it "Your faith leads to death." the main character says to the crazed psychopathic cult/church leader. It is clearly intended to be a profound and powerful revelation, and indeed the cult leader responds as such as though she is momentarily shaken by the statement. Any person with actual faith understands this as a fundamental tenet of faith. Any true faith can lead to death - the nature of faith requires the possibility. For Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Catholics, the story of Abraham and Issac is probably the best example of this. As I often say, writers shouldn't write stories about things that they clearly do not understand because they generally just end up looking stupid to anyone who does understand the subject. I expect the vast majority of people who go to see this movie will pass by that dialogue without much notice, or may even find it as profound as the writers obviously think it is.

Bottom line:
This movie will potentially scare the crap out of you. There are plenty of scenes that will unsettle even the most stalwart of horror afficianados (whether they'll admit it or not). Fans of the game will enjoy the mostly faithful storyline. The story caters both to the gory and psychological sides of horror. The movie mostly sticks to what it's good at and doesn't have any sexual references of any kind. The morality aspect is deeply flawed and silly, and should by no means be taken seriously. The casting was decidedly feminist.