Silent Hill: A Film for All

Rating: 9/10 (24 April 2006)

Christophe Gans has successfully made the first truly good video game adaptation. and here's how he did so: - i'm going to start this off by saying Roger Ebert shouldn't be a critic: "video games are not art, they're just a distraction from true art" nay my friend, some video games can tell some of the most beautiful stories and grip your emotions better than most movies coming out nowadays. just like a movie is adapted from a book, comic book, TV show, play, etc, video game adaptations are telling the story in a different manner. the first good choice they made was picking a good game with a good storyline to adapt. just by doing this, it had already surpassed movies like "doom," "house of the dead," "alone in the dark" because they didn't have a true story to begin with.
-the next thing they did right was capture the atmosphere the game created. it didn't use the "pop up" tactics of scaring people, but rather putting the audience on edge in a slow, stylistic manner. so just like the game, the audience is on edge for most of the movie, afraid for what was coming next.

and probably the most important part of this was they didn't make this movie just for the video game audiences. they didn't use cheap pops and references to draw in the game's fan base, but rather turned it into a movie that everyone can actually enjoy. now i made the mistake of watching this movie as a gamer, rather than a movie goer. as a gamer, i was a bit disappointed due to the lack of cheap pops, and also some things they changed from the game. in the game, u don't see even 7 or 8 people, and when you do, its individually. this creates a huge sense of isolation thus adding to the atmosphere. the movie had a group of people in it and that seemed to bother me a bit.

but my main point is that Gans didn't create a cooler version of the game, he created a movie. and it is this aspect in which this movie ascends to the best video game adaptation. as a movie, as i mentioned before, it was able to put you in a state of fear that you couldn't really feel safe. during a typical horror movie, when a monster pops out or what not, your usually not afraid anymore, but some of the monsters seemed fake, but even after they popped out, u were still afraid. performances by Radha Mitchell and Sean Bean were awesome and Christophe Gans did an amazing job in using the atmosphere from the game. the soundtrack was actually derived from the actual video games, except a Johnny Cash tune was added, thus making it spectacular.