Hello and welcome to Kersplackle’s Lair of Stuff, where I review whatever stuff I find appealing. You have to believe me when I say this is about the millionth time I've tried reviewing this film. I usually found myself typing away describing something very dear to me that I hold close to my heart. Of course I’m referring the cult playstation classic known as Silent Hill. Allow me to briefly describe the game right now so I could try, and by all means of the word try, to not mention this game during my review of the film. The purpose of this description is for those who did not play the game can compare the game to the film and come up with their own ideas, that of course which I do not want to have any major influence on...I swear I don't...(wink wink).
Silent Hill is a survival horror game released in January of 1999 by a company called Konami. Their little game’s soul existence was to capitalize off the massively successful buzz horror games were having thanks to Capcom’s Resident evil franchise. Unlike Resident Evil, Silent Hill had a focus on scaring the player without the use of hide and seek tactics (pop out of corners, sudden changes in music etc), this game used atmosphere and loneliness as its core of fear. Silent Hill was a story about a man named Harry and his adopted daughter Cheryl who go to vacation in a town called Silent Hill (not very clever but deal with it), While driving to the town, Harry sees the shape of a young girl walking across the road. Harry swerves his car to avoid hitting her, but he is knocked unconscious (I swear children walking in the streets are such a problem now a days). Without revealing too many details for those who actually wish to play the game (I can have false hope cant I) Harry is hell-bent on finding his daughter. After awaking to see his daughter wasn't in the car with him, and wanders into the town of Silent Hill. He is mostly alone or with the strong female lead known as Cybil, (tough girl cop) throughout the whole game and the people you meet are just as confused and lost as you. Many of the creatures you encounter in Silent Hill represent emotions or feelings that characters posses and try to hide, but Silent Hill vividly evokes them. For example, in the abandoned elementary school you encounter these creatures called mumblers who look like deformed children wielding knifes, these kids were allegedly what a certain female character viewed of her classmates after being ridiculed by them so much. With a game heavily focused on atmosphere and the eternal battle between you and nothing, the player constantly questioned what his role in the game was and what happened in Silent Hill. Some of these questions were answered while others are still widely debated to this day. Now that I got that over review time to review Silent Hill…the movie. (creepy sounds are playing in your head now!)
Trying to cash in on the recent thread of video games turned into movies (which has yet to have seen a good, hell decent film) Silent Hill was created...the movie. Thanks to usually a lack of interest or plain not knowing the source material these films bomb to fans and critics, yet ignorant (not in a bad way) people thinking they are going to see a decent film are conned of their ten dollars. Will Silent Hill be any different? Will it actually be decent? Will the writers even know the characters in the game? Let us find out as we dive into magnificently morbid world of Silent Hill.
From the opening scene you are confused and wondering why. In normal movie, as the film progresses you ultimately learn to understand why such things occur. Silent Hill says “Fuck that! We are making a beautiful movie, without that thing you people want to call a coherent plot, that minor idea of character development, GONE!” As this movie progresses there are two worlds apparently. One with Rose Dasilva and her adopted daughter Sharon who have a car accident, are separated and Rose ends up in Silent Hill trying to get her daughter back. The scenes with Christopher Dasilva, Rose’s husband, are entirely pointless, they are there to reinforce the fact that Rose and Chris are both in Silent Hill but Rose is stuck in the fucked up realm with creatures that want to kill you in many ways. The film is hard to follow because you don’t really understand what is going on half the time, Trying to explain the film is a puzzle all on its own, I hate to say it but it reminded me of Pokémon the first movie, how you needed to have background information to truly understand why the fuck two turtles and a dragon are duking it out for some weird floating retard with pink physic blasts. There is a scene where the world is rusting and walls are breaking down completely changing the scenery to a much more grim world (cause the world wasn't grim enough), as a fan of the game I know that was the transition to the otherworld, but a fellow movie goer would simply say “What the fuck was the point of that!”. Excellent use of CGI but an entirely unexplained moment in the movie that will always remain a question to the movie viewer.
With that being said this film is bad, but it does have some good quality features. The strongest thing this film has going for it is CGI. They went all out with the budget and you can see whether its pyramid head (who makes a pointless cameo because I’m sure he doesn’t represent the sexual frustration of any character in the movie as he did in Silent Hill 2 the game) ripping the skin off a living human’s body or watching the nurses (with stupidly large breasts without reason again) doing their always disturbing walk in a corridor. Overall this film was pretty medicore but I'm looking forward to the sequel after all it’s been announced as a trilogy. Hopefully we’ll see the good side of Roger Avary (Good Luck and Good Night/Resident Evil Extinction…I don’t know how fucking drastic the difference in films you make can be but hey Monkeybone was made by the same guy who did James and the Giant Peach, and Coraline) and prepare ourselves for a well written, pretty as hell, ATOMSPHEREIC, I REPEAT ATOMSPHEREIC, recreation of one of my favorite games of all time. I’m not a fan of numerical scores so I’ll just say this movie is pretty and if you’re a sucker for visuals it’s worth seeing otherwise just let it pass by and hope Silent Hill 2 will improve in every aspect. This has been a review with Kersplackle, and you insert some catchphrase for me here.
