Identical apartments. Hitting dummies with a stick. Game is so bad I nearly snapped the (rental) disc in half. Sooooooooooooooo bad.
Ebert:*1/2 stars
I was out in Boulder last week on a panel about video games and whether they can be art, and a lot of the students said they were really looking forward to “Silent Hill” because it’s one of the best games and they read on the internet that the movie was supposed to live up to the game. That was all speculation, of course, because Sony Pictures declined to preview the film for anybody, perhaps because they were concerned it would not live up to the game, or because they were afraid it would. When I told one student that the movie was not being previewed, there was real pain on his face, as if he had personally been devalued.
Isn’t it pretty much guaranteed that Ebert will hate anything even tangentally related to video games, though?
Gosh, what are the odds that a video game movie will suck? (My wife loves scarey movies, though, and will be dragging me to go see it this weekend)
From that review, it didn’t sound so much scary as incomprehensible.
I’m waiting for more Rotten Tomatoes reviews to roll in.
It inevitably means it’s a turd, because it means that the people who made the film don’t want it reviewed before release, which amounts to turning down free advertising.
What a colossal disappointment. I’m just going to pretend I didn’t read it and go smiling into the theater tonight.
Reading the other reviews, it looks like the movie is “faithful.” One reviewer wondered what all the industrial horn noises were about, which put a smile on my face. It says to me that the movie is a slavish pastiche of Silent Hill game memes cobbled together, no plot necessary, mission accomplished.
Just fine by me. “Faithful” might be a silly thing to want, but Hollywood has an inclination to destroy novels, comics and games through igorance and arrogance toward the source. So faithful gets my vote.
However, assuming the reviews so far are right, it suggests that game stories don’t seem so good when you extract them from the game. Just as with bad licensed games, I guess, where the interaction doesn’t work so well when it’s inserted into a movie.
But I am getting ahead of myself - it might still be Jacob’s Ladder In The Mist!
I’ll wait for the DVD.
I didn’t think the Silent Hill stories seemed that good in the games, so that’s not too surprising.
Despite the fact that I never played Silent Hill, hated Silent Hill 2, and know that no screening for critics = shit bomb, I’m about to go see this in an hour. Anything’s better than staying at work.
Definitely. It’s just the pleasure of going to see a balls-out, chocs-away surreal horror movie featuring Pyramid Head. Empty calories.
Criticising it’s plot? Sure. But notice how good Ebert’s review is? He knows what it is. He even has a cute little joke about it “falling long of the video game” or somesuch. But that other reviewer seemed to actually be upset they’re not getting a well-acted film with a careful, subtle script.
Is anyone going to “SILENT HILL MOVIE” demanding to the have the human condition illuminated? I’m going to see it slathered in rust and blood.
Rob: exactly. I read Ebert’s Towlie-esque review (“I have no idea what’s goin’ on…”) and though to myself "Wow, they did stay faithful to the game.
Minor spoilers, I guess.
There were some very creepy and atmospheric scenes in this film. Scenes that were apparently stolen from some other film and spliced in, because the rest of the movie was generic horror schlock. Horrible acting all around and horrible dialogue, but still unintentionally entertaining in the way that bad horror movies always seem to be.
The movie was at its best when it was just Radha Mitchell recoiling in horror from some horde of weird creatures or barely-visible atrocity. When there was no dialogue (except the annoying and near-constant screaming of her daughter’s name) and no attempt to explain things. It really gave a sense that they started to make a genuinely good movie, and then just stopped trying.
He gave Tron **** (out of four).
He gave “Mortal Kombat” a thumbs up.
Well, it’s not awful. Unless you haven’t played the games, in which case it’s pretty bad. But since I have played the games, and since the movie was clearly made for me, I was happy with it.
-Tom
Perfect. Practically the exact thing I would have said having just watched it. However, I’d say that there wasn’t a single thing creepy about it. They missed the point that what you don’t see is often much scarier than what is shown and they didn’t do enough of the former to make it even creepy. Interesting effects, at least, but the movie itself was dull to the extreme. Besides the awful acting (now that was scary!) the characters simply didn’t react the way you’d expect them to in this odd place they find themselves. Without believable characters, confounded by a poorly constructed story, and without a scare to be found, you end up rooting for the Dark to put the movie out of its misery.
[Edit] To Tom, I have played Silent Hill 3, at least. Even that was superior to this movie, simply because you were often left alone with only a bit of static for company. That’s the creepy factor missing from the movie.
Well, you can’t very well apply the pacing of a twelve hour game to a two hour movie. Frankly, I thought it was plenty creepy. The fog, the transformations, the siren, the darkness, the creatures. In fact, the entire production design, and particularly the sound design. Maybe I don’t get what you mean by creepy, but I find that a pretty surprising complaint.
BTW, the first thirty minutes are taken directly from the opening of Silent Hill 1, at times shot-for-shot. That segment captured wonderfully the tone of the game and earned a lot of goodwill from me.
-Tom
I’ve seen movies that left me with that feeling that there’s something behind me, around the corner, that I’d literally jump at a noise in the house, the sort of creepiness that sticks, even if it’s just for a short while. The last recent movie that I recall like that was “The Ring”. I was left with that creepy feeling from playing SH3 for a bit, even though I thought it was simply an okay game, so SH3 succeeded where the movie did not.
I think the look of the film was great and definitely true to the game, from the music to the effects (amazing costume design for the various ‘monsters’). Perhaps if they plunked me down in the set and let me have a go at it I’d be much more than a tad freaked out. Watching it…nah, it was just a special effects show then. Sorry to say it, too. I was really looking forward to another decent horror flick, and SH had potential.
Well, it’s not awful. Unless you haven’t played the games, in which case it’s pretty bad.
Oh man, first you like Land of the Dead and now this. Although I will say that Silent Hill the movie makes Land of the Dead look like Goldeneye the video game. Holy crap does Silent Hill stink. So, so dumb. The actors all sound like they’re reading their lines phonetically, and the writing is about on the same level as Resident Evil. One. The game. It’s kind of shocking how bad the writing is knowing that Roger Avary is responsible for part of Pulp Fiction. Hell, the quality of the script is shocking just knowing Roger Avary speaks english. “So what, Albert Ebert?” you’re probably already typing into some snotty response. “I’m going for the cool monsters!” All the monster scenes - except for one admittedly pretty amazing 4 second Pyramid Head stunt - are in the trailer. The movie’s two freakin’ hours long and there’s about five minutes of monsters. Now here come the
SPOILERS!!!
It turns out the scary monsters of Silent Hill aren’t mad at the hero, suffered through painful childhoods, and now have some reasonable demands, all of which makes them significantly less scary. AND THEN THERE’S STILL A HALF AN HOUR OF MOVIE TO GO.
All that information is presented - honest to christ - in a ten minute cutscene.
It was pretty wicked when Pyramid Head ripped that lady’s clothes and skin off, and then threw her bloody skin at those two other ladies.
I also liked the inexplicable, lingering final shot of shrubbery.
Ah, that’s your mistake! :)
What you get with the movie is a tribute to the games. Not much else. It’s a pretty nice tribute, but I agree that it’s not much of a horror film. I’ll be curious to see how it’s received by regular people. I suspect not very well.
-Tom
EDIT: The post above mine is an example of how the movie will be received by regular people.