From the trailer, it’s looking like they’re trying to recreate at least some of the scenes pretty faithfully. I liked how they did the car crash at the beginning, and it looked like they’re doing the alleyway as well (though the corpse on the fence looked kinda fake).
It looked, like most videogame movies, as being a little overstylized, but as long as it has that oogy Silent Hill mood, I’ll be happy.
What’s with all those other people in the town? I got the idea from the game that it was basically Harry, Cheryl, Dahlia, Cybil, Lisa, and Kaufman, (and the monsters). It looks like they’re trying to pass Silent Hill as still being inhabited in the movie.
The music gets my blood up, then that DAMN SIREN starts up and I get all goosebumpy. Silent Hill was the first (and only) game that really scared me. I wonder if there’s a radio that tells you when the bad things are coming??
Now let’s take a look at a couple of games on that list.
Super Mario Bros.: Sure. There’s loads of sequel potential there (Sorry Mario. Your princess is in another castle), but the game is a bit light in the story area.
Doom: The plot is light even for an action movie. No surprise the movie wasn’t great.
Final Fantasy: Now this has loads of potential story and the source material is fairly cinematic, so of course the movie has absolutely nothing to do with the source game.
House of the Dead: Never played the game, but this fits in with Alone in the Dark and Bloodrayne in that they are directed by the legendary auteur Uwe Boll. Anybody willing to cast Tara Reid as a scientist shouldn’t be allowed near a camera.
I may be setting myself up for disappointment, but I’m hopeful about Silent Hill. As games go, it’s very cinematic. The story is engaging and the atmosphere is pretty durn freaky. IIRC from an interview I read, the creator of the game was on set to make sure things went well.
I haven’t seen any of the other video game movies listed (nor Double Dragon, nor anything else from the Uwe Boll canon), but I have to admit, I wouldn’t have been very interested in them regardless.
Video game adaptation or not, Silent Hill: The Movie looks creepy as hell, with this otherworldly sense of desolation, dread, and doom around every corner of this nightmarish little town. I hate the current trend of torture/mutilate/brutalize horror movies, so I think something truly SCARY and CREEPY will be refreshing, rather than the sadistic crap we’ve seen that relies so heavily on shock value. I keep hearing the games are very mature, intense, and scary, although I haven’t played any of them. I just expect a fun sensory experience with the movie, preferably one that can leave me a little bit unsettled. I don’t expect that from most video game adaptations, but I am expecting it from this, which looks like a HORROR MOVIE through and through.
I’m just worried that they’re going to resort to silly shock scares instead of capitalizing on what the Silent Hill series is good at: a pervading creepy mood that made the game just about as scary the second time through as it was the first.
I agree. These monsters don’t need to jump out at you to scare you; they just need to shuffle slowly towards you, moaning softly. A huge part of what makes the game so scary is the sounds. I can’t wait to see the movie.
I am definitely going to see it this weekend, though I’m disappointed and rather confused as to the lady playing Dahlia. Is she the buttoned-up woman in the church from the trailers? Or the scary witch-lady on the street? Or both? Dammit, the movie Dahlia should have lace on her head, a school tie around her neck, and no shoes on her feet! Plus trailer-trash eyeshadow.
Absolutely. One of the reasons I find the game superior to the RE series. It doesn’t just produce the occasional jump-out-of-your-seat scare. It keeps you on edge, knowing something is out there, but you don’t know what or how many. And your radio is the only warning as they come closer out of the darkness, shuffling, screaming, moaning. The tension of it all accumulates 'til you’re one giant nerve ending. Hopefully the movie will deliver that same feeling.
I’m currently replaying the original game to refamliarize myself with the story and the overall feeling of it.
From one trailer I saw, it looks like the town was abandoned due to either the cult, a mining disaster, or both. What I don’t get is what those S.W.A.T. guys are doing in the movie. And Chery’s (oops, I mean Sharon’s) Dad. What are they going to give him to do in the movie?
I thought Advent Children was a fun, extremely pretty movie (if a bit brainless…), so it goes on my “video game movie adaptations that didn’t suck” along with the first Resident Evil film.
I’m definitely going to see Silent Hill. A few things upset me, particularly the fact that it is now a mother (instead of the father) searching for her daughter, which is a completely different kind of relationship and for me skews an important aspect of sympathy for the protagonist. The fact that they’ve actually given it a real-world location upsets me too, kind of like how they did that for the Final Fantasy: Spirits Within movie.
But it looks like the director has a good grasp of the sentiments of Silent Hill and its aspects, particularly how the monsters inhabiting it are reflections of the self, so hopefully the film will be a reasonably accurate portrayal of Silent Hill. I’m particularly interested in the sins of the mother (as a theme of SH is that the town is kind of a “self-imposed purgatory”).
Pyramid Head:
Pyramid Head is, as I recall, a punisher of sorts. In SH2, the main character fades in and out of a world he created in order to punish himself for his past transgressions towards his wife, and Pyramid Head is his primary tormentor. More info her: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_Head
In the main theatrical trailer, there’s a scene with a whole bunch of people running into the church. There’s a one minute clip on Yahoo of that scene, as well.
Beats me on the S.W.A.T. guys. As for Sean Bean, I rather like him in movies, but the presence of the other parent (and him being outside of Silent Hill) kinda bugs me. It’s going to yank us out of the scary every time it changes to Dad trying to find his way into town. Part of the craziness of Silent Hill was the fact that you were completely cut off from the outside. All the roads out of town tapered off into cliffs, phones didn’t work, etc. Suddenly add a “meanwhile, outside of Silent Hill” and you compromise all that tension.
I’ll be seeing it. I TRIED to play Silent Hill 2, but in addition to scaring the pants off of me, I found the controlls really difficult to work. I’m not a huge player of first person games like that, so I ended up making the poor guy go around and around in circles. It was creepy, but I was taking way to long to get anything done because I couldn’t get him to go where I wanted him to.
Boy, oh boy did Silent Hill scare the bejeezus outta me. The images from the movie look just as scary but. . . contact with the outside world? Mom instead of Dad? And, the worst, some hope of rescue?
Plus, they’ve changed the name of the child for no good reason. How are they gonna do, “Have you seen my daughter, Cheryl? Short, black hair. . .”
I’d say yes. It doesn’t have as much of the hunt/kill stuff, since you’re just a normal person, not a cop. Also, I’d have to say the enemies are MUCH more disturbing than the RE zombies, at least as far as I’ve seen in the RE series. So if neither of those parts bother you, go ahead. Just don’t blame us for the nightmares, and don’t play during a snowstorm or a foggy night…
Oh yeah, and I say this as someone who doesn’t like any of the RE games except the fourth.
It’s not quite as combat oriented as the Resident Evil games, but it’s very creepy. Of the three out for the PS2, SH4 is my favorite. They’re all worth a go though, and if memory serves they’re all available under $20.
Hard to say. You spend a lot of time wandering around in SH2, but it’s got good atmosphere. Silent Hill 3 has some creepy stuff, but it’s over kind of fast.
Overall, I think SH4 is the tightest and a good candidate for scariest. There’s the hospital room with the giant crazy eyed face. That gave Alias and I a start. :eek: The room that you start the game in gets haunted as you progress to the point where it can damage you. There’s a ghost that will follow you from stage to stage if you don’t take care of it.
Of course, it is the fourth game of the series so it may not make for the best introduction.