(identity 'myron)

Sat, 22 Apr 2006

Silent Hill [/misc]

Went to see Silent Hill last night. It wasn't all that it could have been, but it didn't suck either. It had its laughably bad moments but also some terrific horror scenes that kept me from sleeping soundly through the night. For a good primer on the series, see the wikipedia entry.

So let's start with the good. What really stood out to me were scenes they lifted almost verbatim from the video game. Watching these played out with live actors was pretty neat, especially given that the game came out in the pixelicious days of the original playstation. Apart from the obvious scenes, though, a lot of other details and allusions to the game were thrown in ranging from camera angles to obscure references like when Cybil Bennett scratches an area behind her neck. Throughout the movie, you could tell the people behind the production knew and liked the game a fair bit, making the whole thing feel rightly like it was paying homage to the series.

This leads to what the movie really has going for it: the visuals. Camera angles, details on monsters and the town as it transforms from a misty ghost town to a bloody, rusty mess—all of it was visually spectacular and will leave you with disturbing images you won't easily forget. What's even better was that they achieved this without resorting to gore (though where there are gory scenes, holy moly are they gory!). Hence they managed to build up a certain amount of fear of the darkness that the game is so famed for.

So what went wrong? It wasn't scary enough. They screwed up the pacing of the movie and dissipated a lot of tension with crappy dialogue or useless cut-scenes of the husband outside in the real world. The original game let you fall back into your comfort zone by switching to the more benign, misty version of Silent Hill which is more than enough of a reprieve. A lot of times throughout the movie, they would build up to a certain level of fear only to undo it moments later by switching away to another scenario.

What's more disappointing, though, is that the whole aural aspect of the games was missing. The original used sound to incredible effect in terrorizing the player with what they thought would be out there behind the next door, beyond the fog or just creeping into the light of your flashlight. There's no feelings of anxiety when what you hear, you also see at the same time. Relying too much on the visual aspect as the movie did removes much of the psychological horror that's become the hallmark of the games.

Which leads in to the other fault I found with the movie, that it's too obvious. There's one 5 minute grainy film-reel style scene near the end that explains everything, removing any feeling of mystery and intrigue into what's really going on in the town. The game made you work a lot harder for knowledge and even rewarded you by tailoring the many endings according to what you paid attention to and what you neglected in the game. And even then, they left a lot up for interpretation, giving the games a lot more depth, and that's without even going into the Twin Peaks-esque surrealism and subplots that the first game played around with.

With all that said, I still liked the movie. Even with all its faults, it's a lot smarter and scarier than what passes for horror nowadays.

// posted at 11:10. permalink   comments