So, they’re making a Silent Hill movie. I’ve played the first one (got the bad ending where a lot of the story is left unexplained). Nonetheless, the game scared the pants off of me, and the trailer doesn’t look half bad.
Is anyone excited about this movie?
I’d decided to see it if it got better than a 70% on Rotten Tomatoes, but now a friend has agreed to see it with me, so I’ll probably see it regardless (unless it scores really low).
I’m starting to get high hopes for this movie. Who knows, maybe it’ll break the trend of lousy video game-to-movie translations.
I think it really looks genuinely scary, and most importantly really seems to capture the atmosphere, look, and vibe of the games. The only downer point so far is the really lame “scare-ree voice #37 digital effect preset” on the little girl’s “I am the reaper” line.
Holy Crap! Who are what the hell is that? I don’t know anything about this or any other games. Do you think that will detract from my understanding and / or enjoyment of the film?
Probably not. The movie is based on the first Silent Hill game from what I understand. You may miss out on a few nods to the fans, such as pyramid head there, but there should be enough explanation to keep everyone up.
As for who or what he is, he’s pyramid head. He’s from Silent Hill 2. He has a pyramid for a head and carries a big honkin sword. His turn ons are bizarre demon mannequins, damned souls, and long walks on the beach. His turn offs are sirens (iirc) and people who are bossy.
I was gonna say that its his lower half that’s the pyramid, but on closer inspection, yes, his head is pyramiddy also. And I didn’t catch the corpse he’s dragging behind him at first glance, so now I’m really jazzed.
It’s obvious, even to me, that he’s some kind of fantasy /sci fi character, Harbor “smarty pants” Wolf . Does that mean that the movie takes place in a fantasy setting? Because the commercial looks like it’s supposed to be present time and place.
The movie takes place in present day, but it’s a present day place of eeeviiiilll.
Essentially, Silent Hill is a quiet little town where a lot of nasty, shadowy, really terribly bad things have happened so you’ve got all kinds of creepy things oozing out of the place. There are angry doomsday cults, demonic thingies, angry elder gods, and the 2000 Republican National Convention. It’s like Leave it to Beaver meets a Nine Inch Nails video.
I’m sure someone with a much better grasp of the series will come along to correct me on anything I’ve missed, but that’s the gist of it.
Don’t worry about it. Most of us who played and enjoyed the game have no idea what was going on either…
Someone wrote a long analysis of the plot of the first Silent Hill game, which may help. Or not. (Spoilers for the game, obviously. Don’t know how much of the movie it will spoil but reading it won’t spoil any more of the movie than having played the game would.)
Silent Hill is supposed to be a small Illinois town where Things Went Wrong. It’s basically an abandoned modern town, at present inhabited by creatures you wouldn’t want to see in your nightmares, and surrounded by [del]unrendered textures[/del] fog. There’s also an ‘alternate reality’ Silent Hill, which is darker (night time outside), and usually more dangerous and disgusting. Much of the design of ‘dark Silent Hill’ looks like an abandoned slaughterhouse (e.g. Pyramid Head). There was an artist I remember seeing who had paintings like this – I used to think it was H.R. Giger but now I’m not so sure.
In the games, where these things came from and everything that’s going on isn’t really explained (and when it was translated to English, it wasn’t explained even more). That was a large part of its charm, though. I kind of hope that the movie keeps things at least partly that way; bad movies often try to explain unnecessarily.
I thought the director’s last movie, Brotherhood of the Wolf, was a pretty nifty piece of genre entertainment* so I’m looking forward to this.
*Pluses: excellent designs, beautiful photography, highly original reordering of standard cliches and other elements, Monica Bellucci, a handful of truly great scenes, the Iron Chef America guy kicking ass, and did I mention Monica Bellucci. Minuses: occasionally uneven pacing, it’s twenty minutes too long, from time to time the basic stupidity of the premise is too obvious to be disregarded, and not enough Monica Bellucci. About right for a Silent Hill type project, I think.
I really like the music in the trailer that starts playing when it shows the title. Haven’t played the games though, and I probably won’t see this in the theater.
I’m in. Silent Hill scared the Cheerios out of me when I played it (Ahhh! evil ghost kids!) so I’m definitally up for this. I agree that it will be much truer to the games if you don’t really know what happened. You’re just a poor victim who got sucked in.
The music in the game is really creepy. And the creepier and more unnerving the game gets, the more the music reflects it. Akira Yamaoka’s score is both in the game and in the movie, though I don’t know how much of it in in the movie. Music in the trailer is also from the game.
My biggest hope is that the movie will be able to expand decently upon the somewhat incomprehensible storyline in the first game. But now, judging by how many trailers I have been seeing, that’s usually not a very good sign. Still, it looks scarily beautiful but that’s no guarantee if the storyline isn’t improved upon.
And I solved the game twice and both times I got unhappy endings. And we all know how Hollywood filmmaking committees frown upon unhappy endings in movies.
. Does that mean that the movie takes place in a fantasy setting? Because the commercial looks like it’s supposed to be present time and place.
