Silent Hill- My Review (By Jacob Saphra)

Rating: 9/10 (22 October 2006)

Silent Hill is a movie based collectively on the first three 'Silent Hill' video-games- arguably some of the most chilling, yet also most psychologically challenging video-games made to date. The main idea of the movie is that Sharon, the young adopted daughter of Rose Da Silva, continually sleepwalks, often leaving the house and putting herself in dangerous situations (we are introduced to these situations straight off at the start of the movie). In her dreams, he continually screams out 'Silent Hill'. In a final act of desperation after all therapy and help has failed her daughter, Rose discovers Silent Hill is a once inhabited, now 'Ghost- town'. She decided to take Sharon there. She is then involved in a chase with a policewoman (Cybil- who later plays a big part accompanying Rose throughout a lot of the movie) who is suspicious of her. She appears to lose the cop but crashes the car. When she wakes up, she is at the entrance to Silent Hill and Rose is gone. She and Cybil go into the town to try and find her daughter- it appears ash is falling from the sky upon arrival, and neither can escape the town due to a huge earthquake styled rift between the town and the road out. In the movie her husband Christopher goes to the town trying to find her but is unsuccessful. We find out more and more about the town as the movie goes on. It turns out the town had a tragic past and was burnt down many years ago and is now still inhabited by some, but also an evil force which appears every so often in the form of many strange monsters, introduced by a siren, followed by darkness. The movie goes on to reveal more, including Sharon's connection with the town, which is that her real mother Alessa was burnt almost to death by the religious fanatics of the town many years ago and now curses the town. The town also turns out to still be inhabited by the religious fanatics that burnt her, who are kept alive only by hiding in the church, which Alessa/the evil spirits cannot enter. We find out that truly, it is these fanatics that are the real evil people and eventually Rose makes a bargain with the demon that is Alessa that if Rose gets Alessa's evil spirit into the church to kill the fanatics, Rose can have her daughter back. This happens and Rose wakes up again in the car with Sharon safely beside her, although Cybil is burnt by the townspeople before they are killed by Alessa moments before this. We are left wondering if this was a dream or not- but it is not, as when the two arrive home they are still in the strange, dreamy state they were in after Rose woke up at the start of the movie and Christopher cannot see them, though he can strangely feel their presence.
The movie uses a fantastic mise en scene, with an incredibly realistic 'Ghost town' setting, using hundreds of creepy, old and abandoned buildings (particularly such as the school house). The still 'living' characters in the town are shown realistically in raggedy, torn up clothing whilst the monsters are shown through incredible CGI, each kind of monster seemingly representing a type of person that used to live in the town- for example, some monsters appear to be young babies, whilst others appear to be nurses. The way the lighting changes in the movie whenever the siren goes off and the evil darkness falls upon the town is also very well done, suggesting elements of the unknown and a world beyond our reality.
The movie is also successfully based on the video game- shown particularly by some very effective third person camera shots (which are used in the game to show the character you are) suggesting the character is being 'watched' possibly, and also highlighting the incredibly effective mise en scene, as I mentioned about in the paragraph above. We also do not have much use of a hand-held camera, which is often used to display the nervousness of the characters in many horror movies. The movie also incorporates various features from all of the games, rather than just focusing on one of them- for example, use of the creepy and strange electronic music, rather than any man-made songs. We have various monsters, scenes, themes and ideas put across from various movies. For example, the siren used in the first two games to show the darkness falling, which inspires the sheer feeling of hopelessness and the loss of human consciousness that any game-player will have experienced.
I think this is almost a revolutionary film as such, because so little typical horror iconography and conventions are used. The strange, game like atmosphere used shows it as something that is much more than a regular horror film, and also points to obvious pragmatics, such as how devotion to faith can push people over and edge and into horrible situations (i.e religious faith pushed the towns people into burning a small, innocent child) and to how we live in a world, largely based on forgetting the horrible past many have suffered through. If there is one convention used, one can point to the 'Final Girl' theory, as our original, seemingly weak female characters, Rose and Sharon survive, whilst Christopher appears powerless to help them throughout the movie.
In conclusion, Silent Hill is a scary, realistic, gripping and emotional movie with many social and political themes, ideas and metaphors arguably attached to various elements of it. All of these cannot be typed up in a mere review, so I suggest anyone who or has, or has not seen the movie to watch it and to look deeply into every aspect to uncover it's mysteries, much like one must do in order to complete the game.