Okay, so I’m cautiously optimistic about this one. I saw on Blue’s that Radha Mitchell is the lead, which demonstrates that their $50 million budget isn’t being blown on a name. And Mitchell is talented, not just pretty. So far, so good.
The producers are the folks behind the two Resident Evil movies, which are decent and wretched, respectively. The far more encouraging sign is that it’s written by Roger Avery and directed by the French guy who did Brotherhood of the Wolf, which was stylish fluff, but stylish nonetheless. Avery might be a has-been, but he’s got respectable chops when it comes to writing (Pulp Fiction, Killing Zoe).
Silent Hill is so dependent on tone, but has been so wildly erratic in terms of plot. The last three games just made no fucking sense, and they seemed to lose sight of what made the first game so good: it was about being separated from a loved one in a terrible place. It was a predicament anyone could identify with – imagine a child lost at the mall – but magnified one hundred times by the terrible place and the weird events that you learn about the separation. So I’m glad to read that the premise of the movie is Mitchell’s character looking for her daughter in Silent Hill. Very Silent Hill 1. Yay!
Anyway, it’s got money and talent behind it, which are two things that rarely go into videogame adaptations for the screen. Here’s hoping…
Fans with low quality camera/photography skills, I assume. Or else the Silent Hill film is already so awesome that it has blurred the line between reality and imagination.
I wonder if they’re going to do any sets for ‘the other world’, or if they’re mainly going to green screen it. Hope they do sets, part of the charm was the simplicity of using rusty metal and yawning abysses to turn an analogue of real world geography into an utter nightmare. Also, Tom, what didn’t make sense to you about Silent Hill 3? I mean, it was a direct continuation of Silent Hill 1’s storyline, fer chrissakes. Wait, did you get the UFO ending? That explains the confusion.
I have to admit I missed the first one (missed the entire PS1 era actually) but I really liked the second one, specifically the story. I loved the simplistic setup (Wife sends you a letter to meet her at Silent Hil. Oh ya, she’s been dead for years), the way the main themes keep presenting themselves in unusual ways (like all the enemies), and the conclusion based on your playstyle (do you value your character’s life?). Very well done. I would like to play the first one but the graphics I would imagine would be a real hurdle.
BTW SH2 & SH3 has the best music with vocals too IMO. I hope they bring that girl back for a song or two.
I played the first one when it first came out. That game was magic. It has the most amazing small touches that make it the scariest game I’ve ever played. 2 had a great story but I found it far less frightening. It did have the best baddie ever, though.
I’m excited about the movie. They definitely nailed the town of Silent Hill from the exterior shots that have been around forever, and it looks like, from the new photos on Sony’s website and the teaser trailer, that they got the Otherworld from 1 down great too. And 1 definitely has my favorite Otherworld.
I’m also deducing from the photos that the movie will start pretty much the same way that the first game did.
I never beat THE ROOM because the whole idea of redneck ghosts that I couldn’t immediately killing throwing beer bottles at my head offended me on some level. I’ve read a lot about it and it sounds like there were a lot of awesome, creepy touches that could occur, but that only happen on random playthroughs. I couldn’t beat it once, I’m not going to beat it the 20-so times it’s taken some fans to see all the content.
Yes it was. People who missed that first game really missed Silent Hill altogether, IMO. Sadly, the graphics are now so outdated that many would have a hard time playing it. But that game…just brilliant.
I only played the demo of The Room and ultimately passed on it quite simply because it wasn’t a Silent Hill game to begin with but instead shoe-horned into one.
Definitely not fake, as it’s on the official movie site and such. It’s just fast cuts of stuff, but I wouldn’t mind if the whole thing had that filter on it.
Unfortunately, Konami has said that SH5 will have even more first person stuff. SH2 is one of my favorite games of the gen, but I couldn’t even get halfway through SH4.
2 was pretty good back in the day, but now that I’ve played RE4 I can’t really see myself going back to being defenseless, at the mercy of play control once again.
