Okay. Last night I went to see the Silent Hill movie- or at least, the film that was calling itself Silent Hill.

Rating: 3/10 (22 April 2006)

*SPOILERS*
Okay. Last night I went to see the Silent Hill movie- or at least, the film that was calling itself Silent Hill.
I really don't know what to say. I was let down on virtually every front, even after knowing about many of the millions of changes Gans had made before watching it.
I managed, eventually, to come to terms that Harry, LISA (Hello favourite character) and Kaufmann weren't in it. I managed to come to terms with the fact that he'd taken monsters from SH2 and leaving out most of the monster from 1, I managed to come to terms with the fact that he'd added an 'evil' Alessa, etc, etc. From the interviews, and how much he went on and on and on about loving the games and playing them for hours I truly believed that -somehow- he would make it so that none of those things mattered.
I was wrong. VERY wrong.
To the film's credit, the monsters, aesthetically, were beautifully done. But again, aside from the grey children and the janitor, none of them had any meaning with respect to the characters. It hurt the movie a lot more than I thought it would, for me at least. Also, the first little bit once Rose had entered Silent Hill was pretty good, when the grey children appeared and when she first wandered around the town. It really looked like Silent Hill.
The part where dark Silent Hill failed was that there wasn't enough of it. I mean, the needn't have gone all out and made it DARK dark Silent Hill, but just visually blacker. She spent too much time in church, in foggy SH and with other people. I never got the feeling, so intrinsic to Silent Hill, that she was going deeper into anything.
Speaking of which, the plot and "symbolism" (if it even deserves to be called that), were so blatant and in your face as to be irritating. *Cue giant cross behind Rose* *Cue psalm- repeat until brains of audience explode* *Cue cliché and tedious speeches about cult that bares no resemblance to the actual cult from the game*
I thought when he said one of the themes was going to be motherhood that it would be deep and rich and SUBTLE ( a word Christophe must never have heard of in his life), and instead the movie was littered with overused, overly dramatic crap that could have come out of a dollar store paperback. It was really laughably bad- not to mention the constant reiterations by Rose that " Everything's going to be OK." -_-
The most interesting character, in my mind, was Rose's husband- and he was also very well acted. I think Dahlia was fairly well acted as well, although her character was completely COMPLETELY different from in the games. Here, I would like to bring attention to the interview with Mr. Gans in which he said something like, " You can't just put a girl in Jill's clothes and expect her to be the character." I can understand developing the character more, I was all for that- but she really was NOTHING like Dahlia in the games.
Another unwelcome and badly done addition was the evil Alessa- who succeeded at being everything but frighting, with tacky lines that rivaled even Rose and Cybil's. I don't think it was the actress's fault. It was just a BAD idea.
Reversing and mutilating the cult from SH was also a big mistake, as was changing Alessa's back story. The cult was so much more subtle and mysterious than that in the games. It was powerful and creepy and interesting. Christophe just turned it into an excuse to go on his own personal tangent about themes that, if present in SH games, are always below the surface rather than screaming in your face as if you don't have the brains to figure it out.
The story was very predictable (not just for fans of the game, my friend, who hasn't played them, thought so too) and the constant barrage of 'fire' imagery and references was too much of a good thing. If they'd have kept it minimal it could have been powerful...but no, like with the religious aspect it was everywhere in the most obvious ways. Explaining the story in one huge lump was unsuccessful too, and didn't give you any satisfaction as to figuring anything out (not that there was much to figure out). If Rose had traveled (mostly) solo, and -slowly- found things out, it would have worked much better. You know, like in the games?
I could say more, but as it is I'm likely to get flamed to death for this. As such, I would like to say that I was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the film. I really trusted Gans, but he changed Silent Hill so much that it wasn't really Silent Hill anymore- more like his own personal playground where he randomly placed stolen locales and creatures. Silent Hill watered down with extremely bad plotting super-imposed over it and all the meaning sucked out.
I'm VERY disappointed. I knew he was going to change things, but I didn't expect him to change everything. Did he even -like- SH1?
If you like the games...I wouldn't go see it. But that's my opinion.