You can't make a film out of a video game

Rating: 6/10 (23 April 2006)

Silent Hill attempts to overcome a simple, but almost insurmountable challenge: films and computer games are incompatible. They may draw on some of the same reference material and use similar techniques, but the single fundamental element of a game that makes the player persist to the point of addiction is that the player is personally involved: in films, it isn't. My own direct experience of games, and my observation of my sons' "growth" from Sonic to Zelda to Silent Hill confirms this. It's me as Sonic/Link/Rose Da Silva; I must collect the rings/masks/clues; I am threatened by Robotnik/witches/the undead. My pulse rate rises, my palms sweat and I feel my chest tightening as my health meter runs down and I am failing to defeat the enemy.
For this to be achieved in a movie, the writer/director must transfer your allegiance to someone else and since this instantly puts you out of danger, that transference is critical. When Ripley says "Get away from her you bitch!" in "Aliens", you want to cheer because you have been drawn not just into her world, but into her mind - her emotions, her fears, her maternal need to protect Newt. James Cameron and the writers fulfilled the first law of mainstream storytelling - make your audience identify with the protagonists. For Silent Hill to succeed, the writer and director have to solve this dilemma and also to resolve the other incompatibility which is that story is of secondary importance to a computer game. In a movie, story (and I don't just mean plot) is everything. Other gamers may disagree, but I don't believe that it is plot and character imperatives that drive you from level to level: it is the need to solve the next puzzle or meet the next "boss" that is the prime motivator. Provided that you are happy with the overall playability, and the genre appeals, you'll keep playing. In fact, the cut scenes used to tell more story are a distraction and irritation, rather than a compulsion. Some of the best movies are very simple in plot terms (Jaws is a supreme example) but whether simple or complex, all succeed when storyline and characters are coherent and involving.
In Silent Hill, the plot outline is simple enough. Rose must find out why her sleep-walking daughter cries out "Silent Hill," and, in going to the deserted town, puts both herself and Sharon in peril from an assortment of evil creatures, some infernal, some merely human: will she find Sharon and escape to safety? Had this been the single plot line, Silent Hill may well have worked. But in the opening scenes it fails in almost every respect to engage us with Rose or Sharon or Christopher. or to enlist our sympathy with the family's predicament. That leaves us with the secondary pleasure of enjoying the photography, sound and visual effects; checking the obvious connections with the game origins (running from room to room picking up useful objects and clues and meeting the occasional horror) or spotting the odd film reference - the Midwich School (for Cuckoos, presumably) and The Omega Man showing at the local multiplex.
Horror fans will not be disappointed by the quantity of gore, and the appearances of Pyramid Head and the overtaking of the town by Darkness are very effective, but the plot-turn (you couldn't call it a twist) away from the infernal creatures towards the tediously conventional witch-hunting scenario is clumsy and all those who thought that Christophe Gans' promise that this would be something different might actually be realised are likely to be disappointed. Only the downbeat ending, which confirmed what some viewers failed to grasp earlier as the typical fantasy plot device of people searching in vain for each other in separate but parallel worlds, appeared to offer something out-of-the-ordinary. The trouble is that by then, I actually wanted the satisfyingly conventional: a reunion. Instead, I got a set-up for a sequel, one that, if it is to be any more successful, must either abandon the PC game roots or embrace them whole-heartedly and find a way to emulate the first-person visceral thrills. Might Peter Jackson et al achieve this with Halo? I can wait to find out!