Back in the late 90’s we had been playing Resident Evil and Alone in the Dark for a while, and the horror fans of the world were already complaining that the game play had began to turn stale. We’re always crying for innovation (especially in films, but I’ll spare you that complaint.) Konami answered our cries for innovation by presenting us with a very different kind of horror in Silent Hill.
Most horror games relied heavily on zombies, and quick “Boo… Ahh!” scare to get it’s job done. Silent Hill didn’t do that very often, but what it did do was expose you to extremely disturbing images, and monsters that defy any conventional explanation. Are they Demons? Are they undead? Or more disturbing, Silent Hill 3’s “They look like monsters to you?”
The best thing about Silent Hill was it’s amazing story which revolved around a young woman named Alessa Gillespie who had extraordinary powers, powers, her mother Dahlia wanted to use to benefit the Cult of Samael. Everything that happened to Alessa was at the hands of her abusive mother, including being lit on fire. Dahlia even went so far as to misguide and trick Harry into working against Alessa who was trying to prevent the coming of Samael when Harry had to break a seal at a certain place and time where Alessa would be doing some sort of incantation, thus halting Alessa’s progress… what I’m getting at is that it’s true that in the Bad and Bad+ ending of Silent Hill Alessa was the end boss, however, and it is true that she was the root cause of the twisted world of Silent Hill. But, the witches, Dahlia, and the Order (AKA Cult of Samael) were indeed the bad guys, and in the ending I got Samael herself was the end boss. (I say her because of Silent Hill 3’s revelations.)
Silent Hill the movie starts off similarly enough to the game that for the first hour or so a fan of the game will indeed be at the edge of their seat waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the scares to come. People who haven’t played the game may enjoy the story, and the visuals, but aren’t likely going to be getting scared by this film either. Non-fans will say that they never got the impression that Rose was ever in any real danger. The moment death was at hand the enemies (Whether they be skinless demon children who now have eyes and mouths making them less creepy) or the infamous Pyramid Head (Originally a delusion by James Sunderland in Silent Hill 2) just dissolve the moment Rose is about to be killed, thus eliminating any real feeling of danger.
Fans of the series can simply complain that Christophe Gans strayed too far from the original story. While he nailed most of the visuals dead on the plot doesn’t seem Silent Hill like at all. For a while this film was code-named Centralia. I left this film wondering if the original story was going to be Centralia, but that Konami, who was seeking to do a Silent Hill film felt that the two were similar enough that they could both save some time and money by combining their efforts. This, if true, hurt the production. Silent Hill’s original story could have saved this production, and or Centralia could have been saved by not limiting itself to the Silent Hill universe. If Gans wanted to do his own thing, he should have, instead I now have no way to present the original story that I love to my family members who don’t play games, and I had talked this one up quite a bit.
The first half of the movie, as I stated, is not scary, but is pretty cool nonetheless. Pyramid Head doesn’t do anything uber-disturbing like his video game counterpart, but he does cause a really awesome fatality to one of the unimportant characters. Later on when the towns folks start screaming “ a witch! A witch!” I found myself feeling nostalgic for Monty Python rather than the original Silent Hill. These movie folks need to stop straying for the original material.
The story also starts out following the original plot closely enough but looses critical things like the hallucinogen that the Order was using, Dr. Huffman was nixed, and although Nurse Garland makes a brief cameo her character is changed dramatically. As I stated earlier, the original plot didn’t deal with Alessa being nearly killed by witch hunters, rather being subjected to abuse at the hands of the Order, and eventually suffering from being burnt alive by Dahlia, which is why in her room you see messages like “Mom... mom kill…” and “help me…” It’s true that Alessa’s soul was split up like in the movie, but Alessa lured Harry to Silent Hill to help her to defeat the cult of Samael, not for revenge against a bunch of witch hunters.
Perhaps the biggest complaint I have about Silent Hill the movie is the ending. I know that Silent Hill spreads. It chooses who it wants, and when it will let people go. It’s possible that Rose and Sharon were simply not yet allowed to leave, but many people felt that the ending meant that they had died in the car crash, similar to one of the bad endings in the original game. If this is the case, however, I do wonder how on earth Gans will follow this film up, especially since Alessa is the lead in Silent Hill 3. That’s right, you play as Alessa. The bigger problem is that since the 6th Sense too many writers and directors think that the “Oh and at the end they’re revealed to be dead” ending is still unique. If indeed that is the case here then, no Christophe, this is not a unique ending. It’s another “me too” 6th Sense rip off. If there’s more too it than that then it simply was not clear enough for the uninitiated.
For Silent Hill fans it should be noted that although it nails most of the visuals dead on, the creepy feel of Silent Hill is lost, largely in part for Gan’s silly “A Witch! A Witch!” replacement of the original story. Fans will likely feel, as I did, that the movie is very cool, especially visually, but will be disappointed that Gans strayed so far from the original plot, and that the monsters are under whelming, and even misused.
One such example is the demon nurse sequence. The demon nurses work well in the game. One or two at a time the way they move is extremely creepy, but in a large group like this it looked to me like they would break out into the Thriller dance routine. It was silly, not scary. And Pyramid Head should have had a lot more to do with in this film.
Non-fans will likely walk away with no clue what just happened or what made the game so great.
Books and game adaptations do have to undergo some changes to make them work on film, and I understand that. However, pretty much every video game to film adaptation except Mortal Kombat has been absolutely terrible because they stray too far from the source material. Hollywood does their own thing, and then slaps a well-known label on it.
But I have to ask, if the story from the game is good enough to make one want to do an adaptation, then why change the original premise? Silent Hill and Resident Evil have both nixed the original protagonists in favor of less interesting female leads. I felt more for Sean Bean’s Christopher than I did for Rose. Rose was never in any real danger, Christopher was fighting loosing his entire family. That element of the film worked well on an emotional level. There is no good reason that Harry Mason needed to be replaced with a woman. None. Whatever excuses Gans throws out there the only reason this was done is because recent horror films have this idea that women should be the lead protagonists in all horror films, likely because they scream better than men. Fans of Lord of the Rings would have screamed bloody murder for this had Frodo been made a woman. I have nothing against women in lead roles. In fact, in original stories like the Ring or the Grudge I encourage it. But if the lead in the original story the film is based on is a weakly thirty-something male writer who is a widower with a sickly 7 year old girl it aught to stay that way. It is not okay to change the lead protagonist when adapting a book, the same reverence for source material that Hollywood has for novels needs to be extended toward video games as well.
Simply put this movie would have been infinitely better had it stayed true to the original story, but like Resident Evil before it, it falls apart when it begins to stray. That said, unlike Resident Evil, this movie is still pretty cool based on its visual merits.
With that said this movie is not un-enjoyable, and is the best video game adaptation since Mortal Kombat. Just don’t expect anything super special, let alone scary.