question about silent hill

[glitch1501]

[spoiler] About the ending. My theory is that during the final barbed wire sequence Dark Alessa got into Sharon. Near the end Rose was telling Sharon to close her eyes, but Sharon didn't listen and she saw Dark Alessa crawling towards her and then passed out. At the end when the two of them were back at the house Sharon walks away from Rose, towards the camera, and the way her face looks and the way her hair falls on her face makes her look like Dark Allessa. So I think the reason Rose and Sharon are still trapped at the end is because Sharon brought Alessa out with her. [/spoiler]

im gonna agree with this, this sounds most reasonable from what i understood from the ending

[desperado]

The latest penny arcade was on this movie, I kinda have to agree with it...

[Bobtheduck]

Seeing it tomorrow! YAY!! *some muffled claps, and a cough* Ok... *chirp* Well, I'll give my own take tomorrow. Till then, what I know... They ruined Lisa... I was willing to forgive everything up til now.

Still, I won't pass judgement on it until I watch it. Which will be tomorrow... *dun dun duuuuun!!*

[Bobtheduck]

I saw it. Let me say this: I loved everything except the girl crying "silent hill" in the first part. And the second part? Not as bad as people say, but I am always weary about revenge movies.

I'm gonna answer criticisms I've heard of this directly

1. "It's too confusing! I didn't get it (ebert and like half the reviewers out there)

Answer 1: It's not that confusing. It's pretty straightforward, in fact. [spoiler]Alessa was burned because she was considered the "incarnation" of Dahlia's sin, but Alessa was innocent. For those saying that they removed Alessa's psychic powers, she does seem to be hollywood psychic still and she split into two parts, the "dark alessa" and Sharon, what was left of the good in Sharon... Very yin yangish, but while this is somewhat complex, the overall idea isn't. Alessa made dark alessa and sharon. Rose was brought there because she chose to take care of sharon, so she could get alessa into the church to get revenge. [/spoiler] No freaking problem, seriously... It was explained far too well.

2. Why did rose talk to herself? That's so cheesy!

Answer 2. At least half the people I know IRL talk to themselves. WHen you're stressed and trying to sort things out, it really does help to verbalize your thoughts even when you're alone.

3. The dialogue was horrible!

Answer 3. Some of it, not all of it. The only corny dialogue in the movie was spoken by a. Anna b. Sharon C. Dahlia d. Cybill and e. the mob. Now, a. Anna was basically forced into retardation. It wasn't physical, but was because she was never taught things, and the way she was treated. I don't see anything wrong with the way she talked. She acted very much like a child, and it fit her charachter. b. Sharon... She had some bad lines. No way to get around it. The "Silent hiiiiill" thing in the beginning made me cringe. C. Dahlia It got unnerving after a while all those random verses that Avary just pulled out of his butt... I have to admit that was annoying, but it still fits. d. Cybill's dialogue was a LOT worse than the cult's dialogue... Of course, she was trying to sound tough, and it just didn't work. e. The mob, for what little they said, was just plain stupid... Even the most devout followers of very liturgical and ritualistic denominations and other religions don't act like freaking zombies. There was some definite hyperbole here, and it got annoying.

4. The acting was wooden, boring.

Answer 4. The cult was wooden, and Dahlia, Anna, and Christabella were, specifically, rather exaggerated, but as for Rose and Christopher, There was nothing wrong with their acting at all. I thought it worked perfectly. The "Silent hiiiiiill" part was lame, but that's just child actors... Not only that, but remember she's... Well, I won't spoil what I said in the spoiler box.

5. This is Anti-Christian.

Answer 5. - Um... Ok, the cult was a Christian based cult, so they used the Bible frequently, out of context and very theatrically. Witch burning is up there with the crusades and the inquisition of things that gave Jesus a bad name... The good church, by that I mean the orphanage, was still at fault in the way that the protestent churches in germany were at fault, even the ones that knew the holocaust was wrong they just "played their music louder" so they wouldn't hear the trains to Auswitz(sp?) So, yeah, it can portray Christianity in a bad light, but not more than history does for sure. The "Do you have faith" and "I love my daughter" is the typical humanist assertion. The real hero at the end was rose, who had no religious faith of any kind, [spoiler]brought the manifestation of Alessa's hate into the church and let her wreak havoc to avenge herself...[/spoiler] It glorified revenge and didn't even acknowledge the demonic in the Christian sense, because the "demons" were all people, albeit some people with a power that never got explained. This same sort of "personal demon" born of hate that many stories have used, borrowing loose imagery from Christianity but being nothing more than that. It was more of a vague similarity to the real demonic, while it's roots were firmly planted in Ghost stories that have been told for thousands of years.

6. The ending. Well, it was somewhat enigmatic, but the most obvious answers all seem satisfactory to me. [spoiler]Mine being the dark half and light half of the child alessa became one person again, but bringing that unexplained power that created the hell world out of silent hill brought the hell world out of silent hill (think Heather from SH3)[/spoiler]

7. Christopher's stuff should have never been in the movie.

Answer 7 - I, once again, fail to see the problem people had with him. I liked the scenes with him and officer Gucci, though it seemed he cared more for his wife and less for Sharon, perhaps because he wanted a natural child and didn't get one. So, this could be subtley blasting the father figure as uncaring and wanting simple answers instead of really taking care of Sharon. Well, if that's there it's somewhat vague, and just being truthfull there ARE guys like that. It would have been nice to have seen a loving caring man because it would have been so different, but even though the man who's cold to his kids is cliché and happens a lot more (proportionately) in movies than real life, it DOES happen. This one just happened to be one of the guys who was like that. It's not like he didn't care about Sharon at all, he was just more worried about Rose.

8. This movie was too long! I can't sit through a 2 hour trip into hell!

Answer 8. Firstly, I better not have heard ANY fans of the games say this (the shortest game, 3, took me a good 5 hours to beat, and 2 took me around 14, 4 may have been longer, even) Secondly, people don't seem to care that much when PJ is releasing his adaptations at 3+ hours, why the frigging heck would ANYONE complain about TWO HOURS??? They even cut 7 minutes out of it to trim it down, and it still felt a little bit choppy. Face it. Two hours is a good average time for any movie. Maybe I'm just not a big horror fan, maybe horror traditionally are shorter, but this wasn't simply horror. It was horror drama and adventure. Adventure usually calls for longer movies, and that's exactly what it did. I think people should shut up about the length.

9. It wasn't silent hill enough!

Answer 9. After seeing Super Mario Brothers, Final fantasy:Spirits within, and Resident Evil, people still have the nerve to say this? The first half of the movie was so 100% silent hill, it's not even funny... Or, rather, it was. I was laughing at a few scenes, not because I thought they were cheesy, but because It was just so freaking cool. Now, having [spoiler] The patient Demon's bead getting blown off, and Pyramid head's arm getting ripped up by bullets[/spoiler] did seema bit out of place, as did the scene at the end which I can only describe as very anime like (and not quite SH like) and reminding me a bit of Starship Troopers (the movie, not the book...)

10. There was no original music! It was cut and paste!

Answer 10. The music... I loved the music. True, 80% of it was straight from the games, then there was ring of fire and the other 15% was remixed from the games, but... To be honest, the games had a great soundtrack, and it worked in the movie, though there is one song they used twice which sorta sucked... Overall, though, it worked. Ebert talked about the drastic switch between industrial and soft instrumental, as if that was a bad thing. That's the genius in the soundtrack, the overarching philosophy of Silent hill, that of "simultaneous repulsion and attraction"

Now for my own comments, not just reactions to other people's comments.

The scene in the church at the end... It didn't bug me that much, except... [spoiler]What was up with the barbed wire going up Christabella's dress... That ranks up there with the two vaguely sexual Pyramid Head scenes in SH2 (the mannaquin thing and the patient demon in the stairwell)[/spoiler] It left a lot to the imagination, but I didn't want to imagine it to be honest... (Meaning that's something I didn't even want to get THAT close to seeing... Not meaning I would have rather seen it)

The janitor... I talked to a friend that denied what the Janitor did... There is no question in my mind, though... I'm glad they didn't stretch that out more than it was... At least it was subtle enough that my friend didn't even realise it happened.

The nurses... I'm sorry... They were definately the worst part, geekwise... They were so goofy. The whole scene with the nurses was just goofy. I gasped in awe at the grey children, squealed in delight at the "armless", got shivers when I heard that familiar scraping (seeing PH drag the great knife was just soo much pleasure) and... Well, I've never liked the cockroaches, even in the games, so didn't think much of them, though I thought one cockroach moment was cool [spoiler]that of them eating the miners, ala the Mummy[/spoiler] The nurses, though... They were definately the biggest disappointment (though i still like them better than the belching nurses in SH4) One of my friends put it this way "What did they do to the nurses! The things that gave me nightmares in the games, reduced to this!" Basically they were berserkers that were set off by light.

That's my take on it. Overall I liked it, but I'm never fond of the revenge themes, and the biblical window dressing is just annoying and does little more than start fights which I don't want to be a part of... So, not my favorite movie of all time, but I liked it... Let's say... *** and 1/2 out of 5.

EDIT - Almost forgot to say, whoever said they made Lisa a villainess was wrong, I think... She's just someone who was "curious" So they took a good character and made her neutral, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time...

[Michael]

That's a big post, so I won't respond to it all. I'll just kind of reference it.

I agree with you Bob. In fact, I've kind of been reflecting on the movie for a while now, and I've come to the conclusion that I did like it. It wasn't what I expected, and the games are definitely better, but I liked it. I would like to stress it's not a movie to be entertained by, just like how the games aren't either. It's meant to tell a tale, and then be done.

I wouldn't read too much into the Cult's faith, or as Alessa calls it, "obsession" or something like that. They are portrayed as a depraved group of people who delight in the suffering of others under the guise of faith. Sounds less like Christianity, and more like Islam, don't you agree?

About the Nurses . . . . . man, my audience was so wierded out by them. They were all teenagers and I could just see one eyebrow diving straight down while the other one flew up. My brother actually jumped at that part, when Rose is walking through them and one twitches. I thought that was one of the coolest parts of the movie.

And about the lines . . . . what do you mean bad lines? OK, there were some cheesy ones, but I thought overall they were above average. Here's some of my favorites:

Cybil: "What the -heck!- is wrong with you people?!" (Exactly what I was thinking)

Rose: "What do you want?"
Alessa: "Satisfaction."
Rose: "Satisfaction?"
Alessa: "Revenge."

Dahlia: "Lambs without a shepherd, shepherd without a flock. It's your sins which hold you here!"

Alessa: "It is the end of days, and I am the reaper."

Dahlia: "Burning doesn't cleanse, it blackens!"

Cybil: "Hey kid."
Sharon: "You don't talk to strangers." *Rolls up the window*
Cybil: " . . . . . Good girl."

Well . . . . . . I thought they were good.

Also, Jodelle Ferland is just about the best child actress ever. Kicks Dakota Fanning's butt, anyway.

[Rocketshipper]

I thought the nurses were awesome ^^. They got the make-up and look exactly right, and I thought having her sneek by them with the light off was cool and brought in another aspect from the game (turning the lights off made it harder for monsters to find you) I loved all the little nods to the game, like when Rose had to memorize the hospital map, and when "Letter From a Lost Day" started playing during the driving scene.

Edit: I was looking through the IMDB Silent Hill cast list and I saw something interesting. Eddie and Henry are listed as characters. I didn't see anyone that I thought looked like them. I was hoping that Eddie would be in the sequal if they make one.

[Htom Sirveaux]

Yay Bob! You just said, like, everything I was trying to figure out how to say. And it's nice to come back after a few days of posting and see that I'm not indeed alone in my appreciation of this movie.

As for my "coolest parts of the movie" contribution, it goes to the alley earlier on in the movie, from the familiar camera angle to the gurney to the groaner attack. More or less the introductory part of the game right up to where the protagonist wakes up (Rose wakes up in the bowling alley whereas Harry woke up in the cafe). Speaking of Harry, I went to the movie cosplaying as him. Though if anyone other than my friends noticed, they didn't say anything.

[Bobtheduck]

Eddie and Henry were put on the cast list by a troll, who put a bunch of other fake characters on there as well...

One part that I still question is "Tanya allen as older, scarred alessa"

Is that one true? I noticed that Deborah Kara Unger and Tanya Allen look very similar (when it had the Dahlia Flashbacks), but at the same time, the scarred alessa didn't really retain much of her looks at all, so this wouldn't have been an issue...

Gans said he wasn't going to do SH2, but had talked about expanding on Lisa...

Another thing I forgot to say

11. What's up with all these movies about creepy little girls! What a ring ripoff!

Answer. I'm sick of this one... She is almost NOTHING like the girl in the ring... She has black hair and it's matted and this is a horror movie... Other than that, no similarities... [spoiler]Oh, they're both getting revenge. Of course, the ring girl is getting revenge on people who had nothing to do with it, and she's dead. Allessa isn't dead and she gets reveng on only the people who actually did harm to her (except for Lisa...)[/spoiler]

[dragonshimmer]

Oooh! I wanna put my two cents in xD;

I saw the movie earlier today. I will say this...if you've not played the games, I don't reccommend seeing it. I went with friends (dragged them, actually) who hadn't played any of the games, and they were clueless the whole time. They felt the movie was disjointed and confusing, and if I try to forget everything I know about Silent Hill and view it objectively, I agree.

[SPOILER]Also, they didn't seem to pick up on the fact that the people were in a cult type situation. I knew what it was, because I'm familiar with the games. My friends felt more like the movie portrayed Christianity badly. [/SPOILER]

I think it was AWESOME how similar the movie was to the game, right down to the screenshots, you know, the camera angles, the way the camera zoomed in. The music...perfect. I thought the ash was a nice touch too...

I only noticed one thing that bothered me...where did Rose get those keys from? O_o; Maybe I'm being anal, but they seemed to come out of nowhere...

And maybe the games have desensitized me, but I didn't really feel like this was a bloody movie. I didn't even find it creepy. I WAS delighted with how closely the movie reflects the game.

The only thing is I'm a bit confused about the ending. I've always personally thought Silent Hill was in the mind. Silent Hill is the mind's creation of one's own personal hell. And for some games, I perhaps even thought purgatory. I'm not stating this as fact, just what I've always thought. I really think the games are open to interpretation, and there are forums dedicated to the theory alone of what Silent Hill really is. But the ending leaves me wondering if

[SPOILER]Silent Hill really is hell and that in the game/movie world, it really does exist. Or maybe it's purgatory. Or maybe the world exists simply because it IS someone's own personal hell. Maybe that specific person makes it real for others. And I don't know whether to think Allessa found a way into the real world through Sharon and Rose, which explains the oddity at the end. Or maybe they all really did die in the car crash, and they were in hell. [/SPOILER]

I dunno. This movie is going to leave me thinking for a while. But that's when a movie is good to me....when you have to think about it to work out what it's about.

The content didn't disturb me, because I know it's fiction, and nothing more. It depends on how sensitive you are to cult-ish ideas.

All in all, I say if you're a gamer who's played the games...DEFINITELY go see it. If you don't know anything about Silent Hill...maybe save the money until it comes out on video.

[glitch1501]

i never played any of the games, and i didnt find the movie disjointed or anything...

[Bobtheduck]

DS: [spoiler]Alessa Created the world. Alessa also made Sharon. She was keeping safe the last remaining piece of herself that was not full of hate. The two other forms of Alessa (Dark Alessa and Sharon) Joined during the stuff at the church. Alessa brought the world with her when they left.[/spoiler] All the details to what happened are there for you if you just pay close attention. People go into this expecting they can shut their brains off. You can't do that with this. That's why people get confused. This isn't a "popcorn" movie.

[DrNic]

I saw it, yay! and boo at the same time :S

I loved:
1) The atmosphere
2) The almost identical car crash - evil kiddy things intro to the game
3) The non-rapist (phew) version of pyramid head (would make an awesome Mad Max character)
4) The way the nightmare world appeared (awesome effects)
5) The nurses (very well done)

I did NOT like one bit:
1) The way pyramid ripped that woman apart
2) The bad religion/demon/witch burning bit (I've never actually got that far in the game, I was...mildly shocked)
3) The people getting skewered by barbed wire at the end

So, to summerize. Thought it was excellent, but I'm never watching it again

[Rocketshipper]

Topic Ressurection! Anyway, a while ago I found this really hilarious video of Rex Raptor and Weevil Underwood, from Yugioh, doing a "mystery Science Theater 3000" type review of the Silent Hill movie. So here it for you guys to enjoy. (contains some violent scenes from the movie, and some swearing)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5Ovw6WdudA

Rex: This fog reminds me of that John Carpenter movie with all the fog. I think it was called...halloween.

ROFLOL!!