Silent Hill Adaptation
Silent Hill, the latest game-to-film adaptation, is getting terrible reviews. Although I’m a moderate fan of the Silent Hill franchise, I don’t plan on seeing the movie the San Francisco Chronicle deems full of “bad acting, bad dialogue and a confusing plot — all of which become exponentially more painful when the movie goes on forever.” A few more choice reviews consider Silent Hill to be “witless, soulless and joyless” and “dumber than a bag of coffin nails”, earning it the overall consensus of 29% recommendable at RottenTomatoes.
Joystiq gives us the run-down of Silent Hill’s pros and cons:
What Works:
- The audio: … and by audio, we mean everything that was not dialogue. The music, while cheesy at parts, really fits the movie well. The sound effects are very creepy, and the filtering is effective when used (although we would have loved for the sound to be more disturbed).
- Pyramid Head: In what little time he was on screen, Pyramid Head really stole the show.
- The Setting: As we have seen
- The previews: Seeing glimpses of The DaVinci Code and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest made us giddy.
What Doesn’t Work:
- The dialogue: Laughable at best. We feel sorry for everyone with a speaking role — especially Sean Bean (but we will get to that in a second).
- The introduction: Instead of trying to actually explain the situation (or why we should care), the film begins with a melodramatic scene involving the main actress in scantily clad clothing. We could have used a 10-minute prologue showing what brought about this trip to a haunted town.
- Too Long: Even without an introduction, the film clocks in at 120 minutes — we can think of at least 112 minutes that one might have cut out.
- Needs more Boromir: Seriously, Sean Bean had no point in the movie at all. If they had given him a long sword and the Horn of Gondor, to ride into Silent Hill and behead all demons in heroic vigilance, it just might’ve saved the film.
| This entry was posted on Saturday, April 22nd, 2006 at 12:46 pm and is tagged with coffin nails, san francisco chronicle, davinci code, minute prologue, pirates of the caribbean dead man s chest, joystiq, film adaptation, horn of gondor, pyramid head, choice reviews, pirates of the caribbean dead man, pirates of the caribbean, sean bean, silent hill, glimpses, vigilance, pros and cons, sound effects, little time, demons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback. |
9 Responses to “Silent Hill Adaptation”
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I don’t belive what u r saying.. silent hill is the best game ever and the movie is fantastic. if u can write such horrible things about a great movie that is based on the greatest video game series ever then you obvesliy haven’t played silent hill. the movie is set exactly like the game and any true fan would be more then pleased. un like resident evil which was a good movie but lacked the felling of doom down the ally that the games posesed.
The Moral Is That Silent Hill ROX!
Hey… Well I agree with a FEW points you say… Like: why the director didn’t take a few more minutes to explain the cult to Samael at the begining of the movie, why the girl needed to go to Silent Hill… But of course, if he did that he’d be going against the game, cause in the game (the first one at least), you don’t really know why you’re going, just that you need to go cause Cheryl (the girl in the first game) is having dreams about Silent Hill. Another thing, even if he didn’t explain the reason at first, he could’ve taken a little more time to explain the cult in the part of the church… I went to see the movie with a friend that naver played the game, hence she didn’t have any ideas about the plot. She was a bit confused with that. But even with that confusion, she thought it was really good.
Anyways, continuing with my critics:
About the dialogs: I thought they were ok… Of course I could’ve worked with a better Cybil (the cop) but all and all it was alright. Again a little explanation about the Cult to Samael could’ve worked just fine.
The GOOD things about the movie:
If you played the game, you could see that the movie was VERY respectful to the plot and main course of actions, and also added a bit of own creations.
First: Piramid Head was a character from SH2, and he was here for a VERY good reason. He’s the representation of a rapist violent man (in the game), kind of a subconcious image of the janitor that got pregnant Alessa (of course that’s the explanation I saw for the movie, cause in the game, he’s the representation of the subconcious mind of James, the main character in SH2)
Second: If you understood the games, you could see that there were three overviews of Alessa’s mind: The ash fog, that represents the unability of the mind to focus beyond what’s in front of your eyes. Then there’s the darkness, that represents Alessa’s loneliness and despair, and then there’s the underworld, where all the demons created by Alessa’s subconcious mind are the representations of everything she hates and wants dead (take the child figures at the beginning, they were how Alessa view her classmates). Now all of this was very well represented, even with the aspects of puzzles and mind tests that Samael put everyone though when they arrive at Silent Hill.
Third: In the movie, it’s finally explained the place and destiny of The Cult, and why everyone is doomed from the beginning… That’s a very good plus to the movie, since in the games, the origin and destiny of the cult to Samael isn’t explained throughly. I’d like to think that the movie is a complement to the first three games and their story.
Finally: My own review of this movie is that even it’s a bit confusing, it’s a good movie, and fans of the games will fully enjoy this movie. Of course, you need to keep your knowledge of the story and evolution of Silent Hill…
Anyways, that’s my honest opinion.
Cya!
To be honest, the movie could have had so many more things added and moved around, but then again its unfair to place the blame in a movie unless you could do it better. (Some of us could, but thats not the point.) Considering most video game movie scripts are bought out by people who have never even heard of the game to begin with, this movie was a brilliant victory.
Quite possibly the ONLY good video game adapted movie, at that.
What suprised me is that from what I saw, there were no Silent Hill 4 references; which was also kind of dissappointing considering it was the newest of the games. Then again, not everyone likes SH4 as much. *Not to mention the fact that Henry Townshed’s apartment wasn’t actually in Silent Hill* They could’ve worked in something though, maybe a creature from it at least or mentioning South Ashfield.
Silent Hill was indeed a great movie, but in my opinion you’d really have to have known what the game was to begin with: otherwise the movie isn’t as great of an experience.
Finally, regarding Pyramid Head’s reprentation: I believe the rapist janitor was supposed to be the wire mesh zombie in the bathroom right after the alarm goes off, not Pyramid head. I believe he was included just because he was the most popular of the game genre’s monsters. His representation could have been anything really. Overall hate and loathing, suffering *he IS limping afterall*, or anything as far fetched as a child’s sense of fear.
To the comment about there not being any Silent Hill 4 References:
You can’t really fit in Silent Hill 4 into the movie really. At least with what they made of it. They used SH4 music – I heard Wounded Warsong while she was running looking for the middle school. That indeed required me to give the sign of the horns.
SH4 Was technically outside of Silent Hill as well. A few SH2-3 flairs fit in nicely… but trying to fit in Walter Sullivan, or Henry’s Adventure… would probably make for alot of lame movie filler.
Personally I love SH4, so don’t get me wrong here. What I saw that -was- very Silent Hill 4: was when the darkness came. When the walls and surrounds melted it reminded me of Apartment World.
All in all though. If Pyramid Head wasn’t in the movie. I don’t think I’d like it as much. It’s also a good thing he was not in the movie long. It would havve ruined the overcasting feeling of ” Oh snap. Thats one mean mother…. ”
I personally give the movie alot of credit. Dialogue wasn’t great but it filled the gaps. When people review the dialogue I think to myself. ” What else do you want them to say? Really?” The lines were not corny, so anyone who hasn’t seen it shouldn’t worry.
Resident Evil was entertaining, but it was like a action movie. We won’t get into how that movie was disappointing…
I agree 100%
First of all, I think the story of Silent Hill 2 would have made a better movie, but maybe they’ll use it next time around.
On wikipedia it says that the first script had no male characters and the studio refused it for that. And so it feels, the male characters, Sean Bean and the police detective, are like “bonus material”. They don’t actually do anything, they just fill up an already overlong movie.
The story-telling was amateurish. Normally a movie should at least try to explore parts of the story as it goes along, leaving clues, making the actors guess, talk, think, hypothesize. This one just let’s them run around for 90 minutes and then presents the whole backstory as a (really bad executed) 10-minute-monologue.
Add to that totally inexplicable events – why did the cop get suspicious of Rose and Sharon in the first place and why on earth did Rose choose to speed off after being pulled over??? – and you have a pretty bad movie.
It might be kinda close to the video game – I haven’t played the first one – but video games are being held to much lesser standards, the interactive character makes up for lots of other shortcomings.
As far as video game adaptions go, it was okay. At least it had Pyramid Head…
@ Tim
for your questions:
why did the cop get suspicious of Rose and Sharon in the first place?
because an event occured where a man took his son to silent hill, and threw him down the well in silent hill, officer cyril was the officer at the scene. She had some suspicion that something odd was happening, because of there behaviour at the gas station, suspicion would have been raised even more if, cyril learned that she was headed to silent hill from the gas station chik at the desk
why on earth did Rose choose to speed off after being pulled over???
Rose may have thought her husband may have reported the car as stolen, to stop them from going to silent hill, seeing how he had the credit card disabled and another reason could be cos, she explained to cheryl, that she was going to take her to silent hill to see if going to the place of her nightmares, would help her, seeing how medication and psychiatry continued to fail to help her, and her sleep walking becoming more and more serious, since she almost jumps off a cliff, and is drawing some pretty evil sycho **** in her drawing book.
The story-telling was amateurish. Normally a movie should at least try to explore parts of the story as it goes along, leaving clues, making the actors guess, talk, think, hypothesize. This one just let’s them run around for 90 minutes and then presents the whole backstory as a (really bad executed) 10-minute-monologue.
I agree with you 100% here, just like the game, you dont find out the partially entire truth during the last 30 mins of the game, but you find memo’s and journals. I believe this should have been put into the movie some how, revieling parts of the story throught hte movie, to reviel the big truth in the end, wuold have been much better, and would have increased the non-game fans, fan base, seeing how if they did make the plot more revealing, it would have been easier to understand, even if youv never heard of the games
does my answers to you questions, change your mind in any way?
Actually, the “cult” in the movie was a bunch of stupid witch burners. The one in the game is TOTALLY different. They’re trying to birth a god to bring paradise to the world. Cheryl had no visions that was said. Alessa was burned by her mother because she had a power she wanted. Alessa used the dark world to hide from her mother. She split herself in two (Cheryl) to also hide her power. Her mother made the town foggy. So the plot is pretty damn different and that’s just the tip of the mountain of differences. The game had a good story already yet he wanted to change the plot to make a stupid point about the Bush Administration that would be lost on everyone. Wikipedia is a great source of information (also playing the games). And about a prolouge to explain why they’re going to the town, they did, it was because of the nightmares and sleep walking and she kept saying Silent Hill. The movie may not be great, and bad in some areas, but the answers are there without having to look for them. Visuals and Audio where awesome. Don’t pair the movie with the game since they’re going in different directions.
the game is great.. your just not much fan of a silent hill to appreciate the movie..
My only comment is that I wish it was more like the game in regards to waaay too many people in the film which sucks out the empty lonely isolated feeling that the game gives.
If it was one or two people here and there scattered around. Then this way focusing more on the main character and their connection/daughter’s connection to Silent Hill as they search the town fighting or avoiding strange creatures whilst searching for clues.
This way you would connect more with the characters that do appear. The budget for the film would then go to more high profile actors instead of just having loads of unknown people with convuluted dialog. (more people as well known as Sean Bean for example)