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Ok, just got back from seeing Silent Hill a couple of hours ago, and my review of it, such as it is, can be found here. I don't feel like rewriting or copy/pasting it here, so just follow the link if you want. It's pretty long, so I'll forgive you if you just say tl;dr and don't bother.
The gist is this: having played through 3.75 of the four games in the series so far, I have to say that the movie was pretty freaking awesome, which is probably a first for a video game-based movie.
(EDIT) Okay, just in case that site ever goes down, I'll copy paste what I wrote here:
Oh my God. Finally. Finally. A movie based on a video game that was actually awesome, rather than crappy or, at best, mediocre.
Okay, where to begin...?
First of all, from what I could tell, every bit of music in the movie, with one exception, was taken directly from the video games. As a huge fan of Akira Yamaoka and especially the Silent Hill soundtracks, I was most pleased. The notable exception was "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash, which was actually used in an appropriate fashion and didn't seem out of place. Or, at least, as out of place as you would expect a Johnny Cash song in a Silent Hill movie to be, anyway.
In my opinion, they captured perfectly the atmosphere between the Misty Silent Hill and the Hellish Silent Hill. An added thing that I found interesting was that the snow was explained as not being snow at all, but actually as ashes from a perpetually burning coal mine fire under the town that started 30 years ago. Well, at least, that's what the normal people outside of the town attributed to being the cause. Another interesting aspect that doesn't get seen much in the games, if at all, was the interplay between the Real World Silent Hill and the Misty/Hellish Silent Hill. Real World Silent Hill is just as dead and abandoned as the others, but at least it's accessible by road and, of course, not filled with nightmarish creatures.
As for the plot, I'd say it was based about... say, 60-70% on the first game, maybe 5% from the second and third games, and the rest being original content specifically for the movie. The specifics of why Rose and Sharon (the movie equivalent of Harry and Cheryl) went to Silent Hill are different, but the result is ultimately the same. Pretty much the intro sequence of Silent Hill 1 is used almost exactly as it happened in the game, up to and including the freakish child monsters. The only difference being that Rose managed to escape, rather than being "killed" as Harry was (as I fully expected her to be, actually). The movie moves along, mostly following the plot of SH1, until Rose and Cybil get to the hotel. But then, when they introduce Christabella and the cult, that's when things start to diverge from the plot of the games. I won't give too much more away here, but I thought the plot was, on the whole, quite good.
Here are a couple of "OMG!" moments, for me:
--I literally got shivers when Rose started down those steps and the sirens started up for the first time.
--When Rose is in the school looking for Sharon, and it goes to Hellish Silent Hill, and she is running from some creepy bugs... and then, all of a sudden, OH MY GOD IT'S THE PYRAMID HEAD!!! I mean, yeah, I knew he was going to be in the movie from the promotional materials, but still, it was bad ass.
--At the end, when (I think) "To Kill A God" from SH3 starts up, and Alessa rises from the hell pit, this was also bad ass.
Other, not quite "OMG!" but still good things about this movie:
--Jodelle Ferland was, in my opinion, perfectly cast as Sharon/Alessa/Samael(? They never actually called him/it by name, iirc, and just referred to him/it as "the demon"). I knew she had it in her to play creepy after seeing her in Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital, and she didn't disappoint here either.
--The woman playing Cybil Bennett was good as well, and certainly looked the part. She actually seemed a bit tougher and more bad ass here than she did in the game. Too bad she, um... didn't survive. >_>
--I have to give Rose some credit. Harry Mason had a tough enough time getting through the Midwich Elementary School and he was armed with a knife, a pipe, and a hand-gun. Rose had only her cell phone (which acted as the radio from SH), and a flashlight. Oh, and she was hand-cuffed the whole time, too.
--The side story involving Chris (Rose's husband and Sharon's father) was fairly interesting as well. When I first saw him at the beginning of the movie, I totally had him pegged as an asshole who was going to cause problems for our heroines, but he actually turned out to be rather cool.
--In an interesting turn, they changed Dahlia Gillespie from being the main villain to being more just a sympathetic bystander/victim. Christabella, however, more than filled game-Dahlia's shoes in sheer nastiness and bitchery. She totally deserved what she got at the end, I say.
I only had a few (very minor) quibbles with the movie:
--They used "Betrayal" (aka, the final Pyramid Head boss music from SH2) in totally the wrong place. They should have actually saved that for the first, or better yet the second, or best of all the third (and oh my goodness was that ever gruesome) appearance of the Pyramid Head himself, rather than during the intro sequence with the freakish child monsters. The fact that they used it at all, however, was a really good thing, so I'm not complaining too much. I was also hoping, near the end when Rose showed up at the church again, that Pyramid Head would also show up again and start cleaning house, but honestly, I have to say that PH in there swinging his Big Knife around wouldn't have been nearly as effective or as cool as what did happen... what with all that barbed wire flying around and all... yeah.
-- Some of the dialogue seemed slightly forced and unnatural. It wasn't so bad when it was the cultists talking, but even Rose and Cybil had a few groaners.
--Also (this isn't a problem with the movie itself), IMDB is full of crap. Henry Townshend, Eddie Dombrowski, or Valtiel, among others, were not in the movie at all. I kind of expected that to be the case, considering that IMDB is often full of crap concerning the cast lists and such.
Anyway, in the end, I highly recommend this movie. Especially if you like scary movies, and especially especially if you are a Silent Hill fan. This may, in fact, be the first movie that I actually go back and see a second time in the theaters.
--
Kane Magus (It was also interesting walking the half a mile or so back to my condo at 12:30 am after seeing the movie, as well.)
(/EDIT)
The gist is this: having played through 3.75 of the four games in the series so far, I have to say that the movie was pretty freaking awesome, which is probably a first for a video game-based movie.
(EDIT) Okay, just in case that site ever goes down, I'll copy paste what I wrote here:
Oh my God. Finally. Finally. A movie based on a video game that was actually awesome, rather than crappy or, at best, mediocre.
Okay, where to begin...?
First of all, from what I could tell, every bit of music in the movie, with one exception, was taken directly from the video games. As a huge fan of Akira Yamaoka and especially the Silent Hill soundtracks, I was most pleased. The notable exception was "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash, which was actually used in an appropriate fashion and didn't seem out of place. Or, at least, as out of place as you would expect a Johnny Cash song in a Silent Hill movie to be, anyway.
In my opinion, they captured perfectly the atmosphere between the Misty Silent Hill and the Hellish Silent Hill. An added thing that I found interesting was that the snow was explained as not being snow at all, but actually as ashes from a perpetually burning coal mine fire under the town that started 30 years ago. Well, at least, that's what the normal people outside of the town attributed to being the cause. Another interesting aspect that doesn't get seen much in the games, if at all, was the interplay between the Real World Silent Hill and the Misty/Hellish Silent Hill. Real World Silent Hill is just as dead and abandoned as the others, but at least it's accessible by road and, of course, not filled with nightmarish creatures.
As for the plot, I'd say it was based about... say, 60-70% on the first game, maybe 5% from the second and third games, and the rest being original content specifically for the movie. The specifics of why Rose and Sharon (the movie equivalent of Harry and Cheryl) went to Silent Hill are different, but the result is ultimately the same. Pretty much the intro sequence of Silent Hill 1 is used almost exactly as it happened in the game, up to and including the freakish child monsters. The only difference being that Rose managed to escape, rather than being "killed" as Harry was (as I fully expected her to be, actually). The movie moves along, mostly following the plot of SH1, until Rose and Cybil get to the hotel. But then, when they introduce Christabella and the cult, that's when things start to diverge from the plot of the games. I won't give too much more away here, but I thought the plot was, on the whole, quite good.
Here are a couple of "OMG!" moments, for me:
--I literally got shivers when Rose started down those steps and the sirens started up for the first time.
--When Rose is in the school looking for Sharon, and it goes to Hellish Silent Hill, and she is running from some creepy bugs... and then, all of a sudden, OH MY GOD IT'S THE PYRAMID HEAD!!! I mean, yeah, I knew he was going to be in the movie from the promotional materials, but still, it was bad ass.
--At the end, when (I think) "To Kill A God" from SH3 starts up, and Alessa rises from the hell pit, this was also bad ass.
Other, not quite "OMG!" but still good things about this movie:
--Jodelle Ferland was, in my opinion, perfectly cast as Sharon/Alessa/Samael(? They never actually called him/it by name, iirc, and just referred to him/it as "the demon"). I knew she had it in her to play creepy after seeing her in Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital, and she didn't disappoint here either.
--The woman playing Cybil Bennett was good as well, and certainly looked the part. She actually seemed a bit tougher and more bad ass here than she did in the game. Too bad she, um... didn't survive. >_>
--I have to give Rose some credit. Harry Mason had a tough enough time getting through the Midwich Elementary School and he was armed with a knife, a pipe, and a hand-gun. Rose had only her cell phone (which acted as the radio from SH), and a flashlight. Oh, and she was hand-cuffed the whole time, too.
--The side story involving Chris (Rose's husband and Sharon's father) was fairly interesting as well. When I first saw him at the beginning of the movie, I totally had him pegged as an asshole who was going to cause problems for our heroines, but he actually turned out to be rather cool.
--In an interesting turn, they changed Dahlia Gillespie from being the main villain to being more just a sympathetic bystander/victim. Christabella, however, more than filled game-Dahlia's shoes in sheer nastiness and bitchery. She totally deserved what she got at the end, I say.
I only had a few (very minor) quibbles with the movie:
--They used "Betrayal" (aka, the final Pyramid Head boss music from SH2) in totally the wrong place. They should have actually saved that for the first, or better yet the second, or best of all the third (and oh my goodness was that ever gruesome) appearance of the Pyramid Head himself, rather than during the intro sequence with the freakish child monsters. The fact that they used it at all, however, was a really good thing, so I'm not complaining too much. I was also hoping, near the end when Rose showed up at the church again, that Pyramid Head would also show up again and start cleaning house, but honestly, I have to say that PH in there swinging his Big Knife around wouldn't have been nearly as effective or as cool as what did happen... what with all that barbed wire flying around and all... yeah.
-- Some of the dialogue seemed slightly forced and unnatural. It wasn't so bad when it was the cultists talking, but even Rose and Cybil had a few groaners.
--Also (this isn't a problem with the movie itself), IMDB is full of crap. Henry Townshend, Eddie Dombrowski, or Valtiel, among others, were not in the movie at all. I kind of expected that to be the case, considering that IMDB is often full of crap concerning the cast lists and such.
Anyway, in the end, I highly recommend this movie. Especially if you like scary movies, and especially especially if you are a Silent Hill fan. This may, in fact, be the first movie that I actually go back and see a second time in the theaters.
--
Kane Magus (It was also interesting walking the half a mile or so back to my condo at 12:30 am after seeing the movie, as well.)
(/EDIT)
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-23 10:29 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2006-04-23 03:06 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2006-04-23 08:26 pm (UTC)From:While this movie does have a lot more to do with the source material than, say, Final Fantasy: Spirits Within or the Super Mario Brothers movie, I have to disagree with those saying "You can see the game being played in front of you (http://www.hollywood.com/movies/review/id/3492308)" and "But it's this unwavering fidelity to the source material that is also the film's biggest problem (http://www.empireonline.com/incinemas/reviewcomplete.asp?FID=132935)" and such. If anything, I'd say that while the movie followed the game it was fine, but when they veered off into the whole cult thing, this is when the movie began to unravel, if it began to unravel at all.
You know, if I didn't already know from personal experience that Uwe Boll movies were shit, I would begin to wonder if he was really as bad as "the critics" say he is, especially since some of "the critics" are comparing Silent Hill to an Uwe Boll movie. What in the hell? o_O
no subject
Date: 2006-04-23 08:52 pm (UTC)From:And another thing, some of these critics are saying the gore is too much, while others are saying that there isn't enough and that the movie drags on with too much dialogue. Well? Which is it? It can't both be too gory and not gory enough. Honestly, I'd say that the gore, when there was gore, was a bit much more than you'd see in the actual games themselves, at least regarding what happened to some of the human characters, but it was merely par for the course and even a bit tame compared to what you'd see in other horror movies like a Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street or whatever.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-23 09:06 pm (UTC)From:His take on the Pyramid Head, for instance: "For example... I have no idea what the fuck Pyramid Head is, or how he’s connected to the Demon, or what purpose he serves aside from freaking my shit out, and frankly, I don’t care. He’s one of the most striking images I’ve seen in a horror film in recent memory, and both of his big scenes are exhilarating."
And here's something he says that sums up the whole of the Silent Hill experience, games and movie and all: "If you’re the kind of person who finds surrealism frustrating and you want something more traditional, this may not be your cup of tea."
no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 01:56 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 02:04 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 02:10 am (UTC)From:Well, anyway, Tycho is the one who was talking about Silent Hill and not Gabe, and usually my tastes are more in line with Tycho's than Gabe's anyway. Except in this one aberrant instance, in which I am of the humble opinion that Tycho is much mistaken.