Tampering with Silent Hill

Rating: 6/10 (22 April 2006)

Silent Hill (Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Laurie Holden, Jodelle Ferland) Six out of ten stars ****** "Only the Dark one opens and closes the door to Silent Hill." Silent Hill is an absolutely frightening video game. I still won't play the game alone at night, that's how much it STILL freaks me out. The game plays on your isolation and fear, especially thanks to the environment (going from foggy, to dark, to hell and back again). It is a creepy, psychological horror game, and it is still among my favorites. When I found there was a movie coming out, I was thrilled; could they capture the same psychological terror that the game gave us so well? The trailers all looked so very promising. Unfortunately, the movie just failed to live up to expectations.
Once Rose (Mitchell) reaches Silent Hill, the movie takes basically the exact same path as the first game for around ten minutes or so. We get crazy camera shots (a nice nod to the awkward camera of the games) following Rose as she chases someone that she thinks is her daughter down a dark alley. All of a sudden the film shifts into "hell" world, which was a nice effect, but suddenly hundreds of monsters show up. This was one of those things that has changed from the games... in the game there were monsters, but only ever a few at a time. Anyway, Rose wakes up with the monsters suddenly gone (again, nod to the game) and heads back to her vehicle. She even finds a drawing from Sharon (Alessa?) directing her to go to the school! I LOVE THIS MOVIE! So many great tie-ins with the game. Then, officer Bennett shows up.
In what was the first of many deviations from the game that I did not like, Cybil shows up and treats Rose like complete crap, even ARRESTING her and trying to take her out of Silent Hill. What? Then again I don't know why they had Rose speed away after being pulled over by Cybil anyway... they should have left the opening more like the opening of the game. They changed Cybil's character for some reason, that's OKAY, I guess. Why does she follow Sharon around? One of the KEY components of the game, one of the most fun elements of the game was the fact that you were always isolated and alone in this freaky place. Why is it that Rose isn't alone for most of this film? It's like the filmmakers knew what made Silent Hill freaky and terrifying, and they added characters to it, which totally destroyed the whole thing. When Rose is alone in the film, pretty much at any time, those are the film's best scenes.
But the film never quite seems to grasp onto the terror that the game had pumping through it. The story was pretty good, but I have to draw attention to the fact that, about 3/4 of the way through the film, they stopped everything to tell us the entire plot since they didn't do much in the way of plot development throughout the rest of the movie. This smacked of laziness and I found myself rolling my eyes when this happened. We see who appears to be Lisa with Alessa, but she doesn't have red hair and isn't explained at all, a rip-off since Lisa was one of the game's best characters because of her connection to Alessa. Where was Kaufmann? Why was Dahlia just some sympathetic old lady? Dahlia in the game was a terrific villain, why remove her from the picture completely but still keep her in the film? Why were there (at least) 40 or 50 people in Silent Hill? Crowd scenes?! Where in any of the games do you ever see a crowd?! It started out promising, had its better parts, but it just didn't capture the essence of the games. The worst part of this, however, was probably the fact that they didn't stay in Silent Hill. At any number of times through the film, they cut out of Silent Hill to the B story going on with Chris (Sean Bean), Rose's husband, who is not in the world of Silent Hill and is trying to find his wife and daughter. This story wasn't even that interesting, quite frankly, and every time they cut away to it, you lost a little bit of what made the games so great. The fact that Harry was trapped in Silent Hill the whole time made it that much creepier; that environment started to wear on you after awhile. Cutting away to the real world of which Silent Hill is not a part completely destroys the effect.
It had its good parts, but it never captured the terror and all-out creepy feeling that the game(s) give you. They changed some aspects of the story, which I wouldn't have had a problem with if they hadn't tampered with the exact formula that makes each game what it is: that being the isolation and trapped feeling of the characters. It did so many things right and tied into the games so well at times, but it just deviated far too much at other times. Unfortunately those deviations managed to steer the film too far off course and removed the audience from it. I did rather enjoy the ending, however, which I am understanding many people did not understand; I won't ruin that for any potential moviegoers. Six out of ten stars.