I have played this gaming series since the beginning. On Friday I went to see the film. Here's a review I found. I liked the film although I did find the story line very flimsy. My familiarity with the games kept me from being lost...

Silent Hill
Cast: Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Jodelle Ferland, Laurie Holden, Deborah Kara Unger, Kim Coates, Tanya Allen and Alice Krige
Directed by: Christophe Gans
Screenplay by: Roger Avary
Distributor: Sony Pictures Entertainment
Runtime: 127 min
Rating: R
Year: 2006


ince the Silent Hill videogames pioneered many elements that have since come to define J-Horror (living dead girls, beasts shuffling about as if on broken limbs, an atmosphere of irrational terror), it's difficult to fault Christophe Gans's adaptation of Konami's superb interactive series for delivering a few familiar scary sights. Fortunately, the technically proficient Brotherhood of the Wolf director has visual flair to burn, and with his latest, his exquisitely disgusting creatures and production design (all source material-faithful, it should be noted) are frequently more than enough to counteract screenwriter Roger Avary's clunky attempts to meld dense mythological exposition, game-related references, and biblical allusions. From its foggy, ash-covered small town to its rotting, mutating building interiors, Silent Hill is a spectacle of the grisly and gory highlighted by some truly repugnant armless/eyeless/faceless monsters (including a pyramid-headed villain who wields an enormous sword and a man hog-tied with barb-wire slithering across a bathroom). And Gans complements these elaborately icky visions of Hell—which, in their unnatural synthesis of flesh and metal, feel indebted to the work of Clive Barker—with askew camera angles, encircling pans, and a creepy score (comprised of lullaby piano twinkling and metallic clanging) to breed a mood of nightmarish disorientation.

More frustratingly confusing is Avary's script, which follows Rose (a stilted Radha Mitchell) and adopted child Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) to Silent Hill, a ghost town decimated years earlier by a fire, that the little girl likes to scream about during laughably perilous bouts of sleepwalking near a waterfall's cliffs. After the duo flee father/husband Christopher (Sean Bean) and a cop (Laurie Holden) and arrive at the titular town, mother and daughter are separated, instigating a maternal-instinct driven quest by Rose which involves descending into Hades, fleeing demons, and combating devout fanatics who, in their desire to avert the apocalypse by righteously burning supposed witches, have unleashed a plague of unholy, vengeful darkness. Combining facets of Dark Water and Rosemary's Baby with Dante's Inferno, the Orpheus legend, and the Old and New Testament (via scripture-quoting signs and Rose and Sharon's symbolic names), the film is detrimentally overstuffed with backstory, unbelievable protagonist behavior, and videogame-worthy dialogue that doesn't improve even when spoken by a wraithlike Deborah Kara Unger or a psychotic Alice Krige. But despite its often-overwhelming nonsensicality, there's ultimately something irresistibly fiendish about Silent Hill, which not only condemns holier-than-thou religious zealots, but also—if I understand its gruesome finale—seems to be firmly on the side of the Devil.

Nick Schager
© slant magazine, 2006.

I thought it was pretty good. Not ..scary but there are some pretty fucked up parts that are worth a see. I loved the nurses at the end !

The nurses were also my favourite.


I found it rather gorey, but fake gorey? Still scared me nonetheless.
It was really quiet in the theatre, and it was during a very quiet (BUT TERRIFYING and suspenseful) part of the movie...I wimpered "oh GOD" and I got a few chuckles.

I give it an A+.

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It was okay. The ending made no sense really.


SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why were they dead? I though the little girl would've SAVED them! The mum brought closure to them. What the fuck? I hope it wasn't done for series continuity. I'm sure they'd find a reason for the game (to continue in Silent Hill) anyhow.


Overall, not as scary, not as weird, and the characters are definitely not as interesting as, say, Heather and Harry. I mean, Heather was fucking UNcurious about talking to a person who claims they know something about her birth in the fucking shopping mall from a man in a trenchcoat and she's sure as Hell realistic through out the game, but when I hear...

"Where did you get this paper!?"
"(so fucking confused for some strange, stupid reason)

1:30 of talking, :30 of Hollywood-ised terror. It would've been better if she had had any sort of emotion in every scene proceeding the Pyramid Head scene in the school. "It's go-ing to be o-kay. *clink*" Honestly, is she trying to play a mother with a full frontal lobotamy or a robot made of colostomy bags? She suceeded. And this movie sucked anyways.

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"the height of arrogance is the height of control of those who create God in their own image"

spoiler: they died in the car crash. same with the police officer. they were in limbo.

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If you are Canadian, there is a 30% chance you are already in Broken Social Scene

overall it was way better than what i had expected, very very true to the games. and i did enjoy it due to being a huge silent hill fan, but it seemed very, very fake to me.. all videogame to movie games do though, i mean i'm used to seeing people in silent hill games saying random weird stuff, but when those weird bitches on the movie did it everyone just laughed at how stupid they looked. and why did they add all the extra gore? i dont remember ever seeing anything that gorey in the movie. bleh.

I never had played the games properly before - i'm much more of a Resident Evil fanatic. But the movie looked quite cool, after the first half hour I was like "Ugh this is going to be a really stupid hack n slash pointless horror", but to be honest it scared the shit out of me at some points, and not alot of movie scare me lol. It shouldnt have been a 15!! Some bits were stupid, and I still am not 100% on what actually happened, but it was damn good entertainment.

i've never played any of the resident evil games. which is the scariest in your opinion? i kind of like the movies. are they anything like the games?

Milla's character, Alice, isn't in the games and they do deviate quite a bit from them in the movies.

As far as the games, RE4 is the best so far hands down as far as graphics and monsters you battle etc. However, I'd have to give the creep factor to RE3.

Running around with 2 bullets left in a whimpy 9mm pistol, getting something you needed and heading halfway back across the city only to almost reach you destination and then hear "Stars" as NEMESIS comes running at you with a rocket launcher always leaves you wishing for an escape route real quick.

As far as the Silent Hill movie, I was pulling for Pyramid Head all the way. Wish he would've got more screen time.

the movie is pretty good. i mean it's basically what i expected, and i'm a hardcore, insane silent hill fan. i was not at all disappointed.

the thing that keeps it true to the games (because really, they're very different) is the fact that there's not a definitive answer. keeping it somewhat open to theories is good, it's the same as the games in that way.

i was semi pissed off at them for including pyramid head in the movie... but not really because he's like, the ultimate video game baddie. apparently they're making a second movie. maybe he'll get more screentime then.

ok i've geeked out now

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how in the hell do i still have a sub?

Yeah I heard Pyramid Head was supposed to be a subconcious manifestation of James Sutherland's. I haven't played the first game, only the second. Is PH even in the first game?
I heard they're working on a fifth game. Should be intense with the better graphics these days.

I'm not much of a gamer, but I like the RE and SH franchises.

ok, considering this a SPOILER WARNING. but only for the games, not for the movie.....



nope, he only appears in silent hill 2. you're exactly right. as far as i can tell, pyramind head is a manifestation of james, the way maria is a manifestation of mary. neither of them are really "there", they just appear to james as a reminder of what he did to his wife. that's why pyramid head kills maria so many times, and she just keeps re-appearing, alive and well.

but like i said, nothing's really certain. it's just the theory that makes the most sense.

you should definitely play the other games. all of them (even the first one, with it's awful graphics) are brilliant.

yeah, there will be a game called silent hill: origins released on PSP at the end of the year, and then silent hill 5 will be released sometime next year i think. i'm such a huge nerd for these games, i am totally beside myself just imagining what silent hill will look like on PS3.

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how in the hell do i still have a sub?

Did you know there's an actual town, Centralia, Pennsylvania, that the movie tips the hat to? They've had coal fires burning underground for over 30 years now. There's like 12 residents total left there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania

The movie freaked me out. The girl had no mouth on the print ads for it. Spooky stuff.

I quite like it, I don't get scared by films, I liked the nurses and the bit where she is burnt whilst tied to the ladder made me squirm a little.

Radha Mitchell was in neighbours..i think she was maybe toadie's girlfriend..????

Could have been better. They spent too much time lollygagging around trying to reconcile the story.

But surely I would not consider it a disappointment for true fans, cuz visually (which is what counts in this series) it was delightful.

i was actually into the movie alot more than i thought i would. i played & beat all the games, & was thought i was going to be really elitist w/ this movie, but it really did prove me wrong.

the fx & the scene concepts [the guy crawling out of the bathroom stall, the little girl getting her revenge, the delivery room scene] were all great, production-wise & plot-wise.

i didn't like the ending too much though. i hate cliffhangers.

& the little girl is ADORABLE. too bad she's a canuck.

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hollywood would be jealous.

HEY i delivered her mail for a week or so. Her secretary was nice, and hit on me.

And what's wrong with being a canook? Quit yer ballyraggin', ya gowdy scut. If I 'ad a face da likes a yers me son, I'd walk backwards.

i..


i'm at a loss of words right now. i'm sorry.

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hollywood would be jealous.