Silent Hill: non-spoiler review

Movies
41

Maybe I wasn’t clear, but what I meant was that other movies don’t have the narrative inversion of dropping you into a situation and only explaining it after the fact. Almost all horror movies start with unsuspecting victims wandering into some Terrible Pre-Existing Evil. A shark in the water, a planet full of alien eggs, mutant cannibals in a nuclear test site, a world ended by a monkey virus, a haunted videotape, etc. This stuff will be explained only when the protanonists figure it out.

But in an action movie and a romance, you know what the pieces of the puzzle are early on: good guy, bad guy, McGuffin, set pieces. Boy, girl, misunderstanding, love scene. There’s the “what”. Now let’s watch the “how” play out.

Horror movies usually thrive on playing it closer to the vest. They keep you involved by starting with a bang and following up with the promise that you’re going to find out Something Cool and Scary and Terrible, only to renege because the writers aren’t good enough.

At least in a bad action movie or romance, you know early enough when you’re dealing with bad writers. They have to pony up pretty quick and they don’t get the luxury of hiding behind the Unexplained or the Supernatural.

-Tom

42

Its easier to understand Silent Hill if you’ve played the games in order. A significant part of Silent Hill 1 was about a town being dragged into hell, basically. After the events of Silent Hill 1, the town of Silent Hill is no longer a normal part of our world.

SH2 establishes that the town exerts a pull on damaged individuals in some way, drawing them into itself and putting them through some form of cruicable. James was constantly tormented by visions of a twin of his wife being murdered, while he was powerless to stop it. Angela was constantly seeing her father, who she had killed for sexually abusing her. And wherever Eddie went, all he saw was people laughing at him.

SH3, on the other hand, attempts to fill in the backstory from the very first game - why the town was taken into ‘the other side’. Who the cultists were that performed the ritual, and why they did it - and finally, what had happened to Harry and Cheryl after they escaped from that doomed place.

SH4 was bullshit and crap.

43

Heh, yeah tell me about it. The movie was good (more of a suspense than a horror), but not as exciting as the preview for a remade The Omen. That’s all I’m saying.

44

Yeah, that makes sense, but there are plenty of examples from other genres. Phenomenon, for instance. God, what a pisser ending that film had. I thought that was Peter Gabriel singing I Have the Touch, not I Have the Tumor. Or, arguably, Solaris. Fortunately (IMO), it did not have to depend on its McGuffin to stay afloat. Because, like, the planet does what it does because that’s what it does - but fuck that, let’s shoot it with a Braxton-Hicks Pickleflicker because DUH everyone knows the effects of a planet that can make flesh from human memory are negated by shooting a Braxton-Hicks Pickleflicker at them.

It’s also funny when filmmakers go about trying to solve the mystery in extremely stupid ways. Another film that sort of gets by on other things (like actually being fairly creepy in many places) so you don’t notice is The Ring. "ONOS a VCR tape that kills in 7 days! I must dissect it as I am a journalist and skilled in such matters! Such other supernatural things occur! Of course the spirirt of the crazy girl wants to kill random people because of her fate on Earth, by using a cursed VCR tape which (after 7 days, if the viewer does not somehow figure out the way to avoid it, and is near a TV set at the time) forms a magic portal in the TV set from the netherworld so her vengeful spirit can kill them by hand and then go back into the TV set, biding her time until somebody watches the tape. I am in Hell and know nothing of these DVD things, BTW.

45

That was a bit unnerving for me in the theater. They just kept calling out my name. I do like the idea of people committing suicide in my name, however.

46

Unfortunately, The Omen looks like a straight-up remake. It’s not quite Gus van Sant’s shot-for-shot Psycho, but still. I haven’t seen the original in a long time, but from the trailer, it does look like there’s much new or different, which begs the question, ‘Why remake it? Doesn’t the original hold up?’

Yeah, before it falls apart – like horror movies almost invariably do – the Ring works as a sort of horror analogue to DOA, the movie where the victim has been poisoned and has to solve his own murder before the poison runs its course. I haven’t seen the original, but cheers to Verbinski for giving it a college try. The horse on the ferry almost made it worthwhile.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to make a movie about someone doing research when that someone isn’t Jack Nicholson, the script isn’t by Robert Towne, and the director isn’t Roman Polanski.

-Tom

47

Well, I don’t know, Tom. I guess most people just can’t appreciate older films and need them to be spruced up with modern equipment.

;)

48

Did you just call Gregory Peck and David Warner older equipment? And saying that about Lee Remick? Dude, that’s just mean!

I do, however, think David Thewlis, Mia Farrow, and Pete Postlethwaite can only be good news for a remake. However, the director has a history of rah-rah films (Behind Enemy Lines and the Flight of the Phoenix remake) that don’t give me a lot of confidence he can pull off an Omen.

But creepy kids are all the rage in horror these days, so let’s see what we get!

-Tom

49

I was poking at the other thread regarding horror games and aging in the eyes of ‘most people’.

And quit lowercasing my “Of”.

50

Oh, I knew what you were doing. I was just deflecting your point. How’d I do?

Sorry, you don’t get to capitalize prepositions. You’re lucky I’m giving you the pronouns!

-Tom

51

As much as I love Mr. Warner in Time Bandits, I can’t help but think of the MST3k episode with Quest of the Delta Knights whenever I hear his name mentioned.

“David Warner, you are hereby under arrest by the order of David Warner.”

52

Silent Hill 2 spoilers:

James killed his wife. It didn’t happen a few years ago, it happened weeks ago. The act of killing his wife, which was both merciful and selfish at the same time, has quite reasonably unhinged James.

Maria was not a real person. Maria was a hyper-sexualized reflection of Mary – what the dark side of James wished Mary had been. The town created her to torment James. Every time she is beat up or apparently killed, that is the town saying “You killed your wife.”

After the big reveal where James remembers what he has done, then she becomes a monster because Maria-as-fill-in is no longer necessary. Of course, there is an ending where James chooses to delude himself, to forget what he has done, and to take Maria with him. As they drive away from Silent Hill, Maria begins to cough the same way Mary did. James will just repeat the events that lead to Silent Hill again. In this ending he is trapped by the town.

In the In Water ending, Mary’s letter is a construct of James’ mind that is reminding him that while there were some selfish and bad motives mixed in, that the act of killing Mary was also merciful. She had been in terminal pain. It is a part of James forgiving himself for her murder. In Water, that small bit of forgiveness is not enough and he kills himself. In another ending he manages to walk away from the town as a free man.

Silent Hill 2 was all about guilt. Angela killed her father, a man who had raped her and abused her mother. Angela can’t let go of her guilt because her mother won’t forgive her, so she is drawn into Silent Hill where she eventually commits suicide. Eddie feels guilty about shooting that dog, but instead of coming to grips with it, he justifies his actions into a shooting spree. He is also drawn into the city because of his guilt. Laura sees no monsters because she has no guilt, thus the city cannot touch her.

As I said before, Maria was a construct of the town. The extra chapter reveals that she does think for herself, and that she was told that unlike the other monsters, she has a chance to escape the town and live like a normal person. Even though she doesn’t entirely understand this message, she knows that James is her ticket out of the town and so she does anything she can to get to him.

53

That was interesting enough that I kept wanting to stop reading it in case I play that game, but couldn’t.

Not exactly in keeping with the “non-spoiler” part of this thread’s title though :/.

54

From what I understand, the 5th game will be more like 2 in that it will be exploring why a person is drawn to the town. So you’ll just have to play that one before they make Silent Hill: the Movie 2 and I decide to explain it in the movie section. ;)

Seriously, 2 had the best story and also gave us the marvel that is Pyramid Head, but had the worst pacing. The first 4 hours of that game are like molassas.

55

I agree. I played through all of the games except 4 (got about an hour in before it all became clear.)

But the actual experience of playing them as games having long vanished from memory, it’s the second game’s story that really sticks.

I’m of a mind that a really fantastic movie would have been to play Silent Hill completely straight (“Anthracite fumes, man, they’ll drive you crazy”) so the viewer can go away thinking that the apparently supernatural scenario had something to do with the broken people who took it there with them, rather than formless demonic jibber-jabber that ultimately needs a voice-over cutscene to explain.

I’m a huge fan of stuff that can be read entirely on two levels and remain comprehensible and coherent. So, the one thing that tends to annoy me about supernatural, surreal horror is when you have a long puzzle scenario (great!) for which there is a specific, explicit answer (fine, if you must), but then the “correct” answer is revealed with endless, repetitious, cover-all-the-bases exposition leaving no room for alternatives (noooo!).

I think that’s what annoyed me so much about Silent Hill the Movie: it hammered the “solution” home with stupefying brutality, then had a crap twist so that it could pretend it hadn’t.

Since analogies are popular right now on qt3, you could say it would be like if someone pulled down their pants in the middle of the mall food court, crouched on a table, wrapped their arms around their legs and laid a well-proportioned, steaming dump. And then jumped up and down in the crouched position, shouting “I’m shitting on this lady’s nachos! Shitting! Shitting!”

If, finally, our hero raises an eyebrow and adds “Ah, but it might really be chocolate!” does that amount to an intruiging twist ending? Is it an alternative possibility that leads one to re-examine earlier events on a search for clues and symbolism that could imbue the entire narrative with subtle new meaning?

Think what you like, but you can’t pressure-hose a nacho.

56

Aside from being a very elaborate experiment in production design, I thought this movie was indescribably boring and amateurish. I haven’t played any of the Silent Hill games, but as a film in its own right it was an absolute mess.

57

I have to dig out the SH2 disk and play it again to get all the story. On the other hand you have to pay me REAL money if you want me to play SH4 again.

58

The movie doesn’t do a good job of illustrating what Silent Hill is. Granted, nobody really knows exactly. However, I think people that haven’t played the games just think of it as a town with monsters in it and a crazy church full of Heaven’s Gate members trying to burn witches. The thing is, if you had played the games, you’d understand that Silent Hill is a lot deeper than that, and that the actions going on in the movie are reflections of the characters and not the mystery of the town itself.

That doesn’t make it any better of a movie, but it makes it more enjoyable for a lot of us who played the games, and less so for those that had not.

Anyway, I liked it. It’s not high art, but it was fun for a Friday night out.

K

59

SH2 spoilerish questions

Thanks for the recap Angie, it’s been awhile but I’m glad I came kinda close at least :) . I’m trying to recall though, where was it implied that James killed his wife, I’m in a fog trying to remember. The ending I remember the most (and I swear that ending actually got me all teary eyed) was the letter from James wife where she basically was telling him to move on with his life and the like. I didn’t get that she was forgiving him for his guilt, but telling him to move on.

Also, what was your take on whether all the monsters and the changing town were real or not? I know James can die at their hands, but I guess you can explain that like you explain the Nightmare on Elm Street movies where a person dies in their dreams and their mind believes it so much they die IRL. The scene I was remembering in my last post was with Angela near the end of the game when you reach the hotel. They have a little chat and Angela starts walking up the stairs covered in fire. It can’t be a physical manifestation if Angela is just waltzing through them like nothings there, and we know She’s real.

Damn, even though I’ve played this game like 10 times I think I may actually need to replay through again. The story just keeps coming.

60

More SH2 spoilers.

Near the end of the game James watches a video of himself. Mary is very ill and confined in bed. She is coughing and he is taking care of her. Then his face grows angry and he smothers her with a pillow. He then confirms that yes, he did kill his wife.

I subscribe to the Multiple Layers of Silent Hill theory. Someone who has not been pulled in, like Laura, sees only a normal, unspoiled but deserted town. Those who the town have claimed see different versions of Silent Hill, all tuned to their psyches. James sees monsters that remind him of his wife and his own repressed sexual urges. Angela sees monsters that remind her of her abusive father and fire. Eddie sees people making fun of him. When people who are both trapped are around each other long enough, the line between who sees what starts to blur. James begins to see the fires Angela sees, and the Abstract Daddy monsters.

Angela walks into the fire and it kills her because in her Silent Hill, the fire is real. Pyramid Head can cut James in two because in his Silent Hill, Pyramid Head is real. And badass. Laura doesn’t encounter either because she isn’t in either one. They can see her, but she won’t see their versions of Silent Hill so they can’t affect her.