{"id":11277,"date":"2006-08-16T21:51:54","date_gmt":"2006-08-17T01:51:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=11277"},"modified":"2006-08-16T21:51:54","modified_gmt":"2006-08-17T01:51:54","slug":"silent-hill-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/16\/silent-hill-2006\/","title":{"rendered":"Silent Hill (2006)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Rose_looks_around_for_Sharo\"<\/a>Christophe Gans\u2019 depiction of the \u201cSilent Hill\u201d video game is really above dreck like \u201cDoom\u201d and \u201cResident Evil\u201d. It\u2019s a very popular series of games that are basically just a woman looking for her daughter in the ghost infested abandoned town, as she battles demons and tries to decrypt a mystery. Instead of adhering to the game and letting its formulas trap it down, it instead attempts to break out. It sticks true to the source material and also delves deep into focusing on an actual story and deep characterization in spite of its failings. Though there\u2019s yet to be an actual video game adaptation that\u2019s been fantastic, \u201cSilent Hill\u201d works because it dares to challenge its conventions of the video game world.<\/p>\n

Where as its predecessors like \u201cDoom\u201d, and \u201cTomb Raider\u201d kept the stories campy and vapid, without trying to form its own mold. Gans\u2019 direction is really nothing to sneeze at as he provides the story of \u201cSilent Hill\u201d with incredible visuals and set pieces that really give the film a cogent cohesive texture. His work here reminds us that this isn\u2019t a typical video game adaptation. After her daughter Sarah begins having horrible nightmares that lead her to near death, Rose takes her back to Silent Hill, a phrase she constantly screams in her sleep, and there she discovers there\u2019s something deep in the ruins.<\/p>\n

The town of Silent Hill seems almost out of a nightmare like a mixture of Faustian set pieces, and a vision of Dante\u2019s Inferno as the characters delve deeper and deeper into its structures and surprises. In it looms some of the most surreal monsters I\u2019ve seen in years, and Gans\u2019 direction and semi-gothic surroundings make this a film based on characterization and story and not on special effects; but while that\u2019s the fact, there are some amazing special effects used with clever resource to add to the effect rather than cover the entire film with CGI for compensation of a lack of story. I was hoping \u201cSilent Hill\u201d would be a film that took its time telling the story and establishing the characters.<\/p>\n

Now while there\u2019s characterization only after the principles arrive in the town, there\u2019s not much before. For a movie that\u2019s a little over two hours, it really rushes the story, and seems to want to get to the meat of the movie without really caring about establishing a rapport with the people on-screen. Rose is a basic enigma from the get go. We know she loves her daughter, and we know she\u2019s willing to go through hell and back to be with her again, but there\u2019s not much else to it, while Sarah is basically non-existent. Sean Bean, worst of all, is relegated to a doting husband looking for his wife, yadda yadda. Beyond that, there\u2019s not much of a story in the first ninety minutes, it\u2019s really just Mitchell walking around and screaming for her daughter for two hours, while she comes across every other creature.<\/p>\n

And since there\u2019s not much to the plot beyond the simple fright and run, we\u2019re taken along for a live action video game. Rose walks around, Rose experiences villains of all kinds, Rose shoots and fights, Rose beats bosses, Rose investigates rooms and corners picking up keys and trinkets, Rose reads signs knowing where to go, and she goes through doors to look for clues to her daughters whereabouts. It becomes very repetitive very quickly, and the writers seem to be stalling and anxiously searching for a way to break this routine. I enjoyed \u201cSilent Hill\u201d for its morbid score, great acting courtesy of Sean Bean, and Radha Mitchell, and its story that requires the audience follow along. It\u2019s one of the best video game adaptations I\u2019ve seen in years. With top notch acting, visuals, and direction, I would definitely recommend it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christophe Gans\u2019 depiction of the \u201cSilent Hill\u201d video game is really above dreck like \u201cDoom\u201d and \u201cResident Evil\u201d. It\u2019s a very popular series of games that are basically just a woman looking for her daughter in the ghost infested abandoned town, as she battles demons and tries to decrypt a mystery. Instead of adhering to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,302,349,477,885,1008,1087],"class_list":["post-11277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-adaptation","tag-drama","tag-fantasy","tag-horror","tag-s","tag-supernatural","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}