Video Game Movie Week: Silent Hill

Welcome back you console paddle nerdlings for Day 2 of Video Game Movie Week and yeah this film was a bit out there from 2006 and I simply avoided it due to the love of the game.    Yes our next film adapts itself from a rather disturbingly brilliant horror game franchise where strange happenings occur, life and death can be one and the same and vengeance is swift and merciless. For what appears to be deserted is actually damned and ruined to the end of days.  No I am not talking about Villisca Iowa.  This is Silent Hill.

Stripper-grams are so detailed anymore.

Rose: What do you want?
Dark Alessa: All we ask for is spoiler.
Rose: Satisfaction?
Dark Alessa: Revenge.







With their child Sharon (Jodelle Ferland of Kingdom Hospital, Stargate SG-1, BloodRayne: Deliverance, Stargate: Atlantis and The Cabin in the Woods) sleepwalking and attempting to hurl herself over cliffs and to the jagged rocks below. Her mother Rose (Radha Mitchell of Neighbours, High Art, Pitch Black, Cowboys and Angels,  Dead Heat, Phone Booth and Man on Fire) narrowly catching her before her child plummeted to the depths keeps muttering Silent Hill over and over in her unconscious state.    She decides against her husband's wishes she will take young Sharon to this Silent Hill town in order to purge or improve the child's mind.  Yeah and later you can let her juggle throwing knives that are acid edged.   Her husband Christopher (Sean Bean of Patriot Games, GoldenEye, Airborne, Ronin, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Troy and Game of Thrones) frantically calling and attempt to locate them both violates the sacred couples computer rules...  as she left it on power save and all the information of this Silent Hill in West Virginia is at his fingertips and he immediately lets out a breath and we cut to the open road.

The darker side of the Land of Oz.

Filling up for gas Rose notices the pleasant collection of colored pencil works his daughter has done and what she has been drawing on the road is full of pain,  twisted people and some guy with a pyramid for a head.  Sharon doesn't remember doing that at all in the car ride. Kooky?  Well yes it is but one would think to see about a child psychologist rather than an abandoned ghost town filled with more than a few freak accidents and fires but hey I am not a parent.  With the typical Camp Blood routine Rose is getting the feeling that the town might be a bit odd there.

Having an accidental car crash due to a run-in with a police cyclist Cybil (Laurie Holden of TekWar: TekLab, The Magnificent Seven, The X-Files, Fantastic Four and The Walking Dead) the two get jumped by some strange humanoid creature as Cybil arrests Rose and Cybil ventilates the creature.  The town seems to be covered in soot and ash as if after a fire, Cybil and Rose try to find any other residents or help to find Sharon and get out of town.

A few comments to make at this time.  Writer Roger Avary (True Romance, Killing Zoe, Pulp Fiction, RPM, The Rules of Attraction and Beowulf) adapted the overall theme of the game rather than just lift the storyline from the 1999 original video game by reading about a real-life town in Pennsylvania being completely deserted due to a mine fire burning the mines directly under the town for 40 years and that was the basis of his Silent Hill.

Director Christopher Gans (Silver Slime, Necronomicon: Book of Dead, Crying Freeman, Brotherhood of the Wolf and Beauty and the Beast) spent fiver years trying to obtain the rights to make the film.  He even cut a short film on his own money and overlayed it with music from the games.   Dance choreographer and actor Roberto Campanella (Year of the Lion, From Time to Time, Shadow Pleasures, Roxana, Silent Hill and Silent Hill: Revelation 3D), the dark nurses and roaming undead are all dancers needed to be able to be flexible enough for the erratic movements of the creatures.  Aside from "Ring of Fire" coined by Johnny Cash every piece of music is directly from the game series.   With a bit of reverse videography the creepy motions of the Dark Nurses was just the actors walking backwards.  

There are little hints and homage to the film as you could see the director really wanted to do this movie.  An extreme close-up on metal pipes as that was the first weapon you get in the game, Rose finding Alessa scribbling insanely on a desk the cult symbol from the games is on the wall behind her, Sharon's pictures a left as a clue of what direction she went and my personal favorite, the theme song from Silent Hill 3 is played on the car radio exactly as it did in a cut-scene for Silent Hill 3
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Okay game boys and girls, the bottom line is while this is not a shot for shot replication of the original point and click, puzzle solving, first person shooter horror game, be grateful.  Think how rushed that whole game felt like and imagine trying to put that on the big screen without people just laughing at it or being so bizarre it is on the video nasty list.  With expansive crane shots, hand held work, tight zooms and a pretty damn fine editor this film was creepy, gory and a terrifying ride.

This county is hell on the jaywalkers!