Genre of Hidden Gems Pt.4 Well Done, but Underrated.

Now to finish off my overdue theme week I’d like to talk about what I think is the absolute best video game based movie. It’s not the best representation of the game’s lore, or characters, but it absolutely nails the look and feel of the games while delivering a compelling enough story. This movie is the criminally underrated Silent Hill.

My experience with the Silent Hill franchise has been a tad fragmented: I have played bits and pieces of most of the games (1,2,3,and 4) specifically, but have never fully completed even one (I am slowly working my way through Silent Hill 2 though). However, ever since playing a solid 4^th of SH2 with a friend I quickly fell in love with the franchise, and tracked down the movie. Where the Silent Hill movie really excels is in effects, atmosphere, and mimicry of the game’s style

Silent Hill’s effects are some of the best in the horror genre, especially for a video game movie. All of the monsters in the movie are practical costumes or puppets (except for one notable example at the end), and they ALL looked great. Not all is perfect though some of the monsters puppets and costumes were enhanced with some CGI touches; these touches were unnecessary and make the monsters look that much faker. Despite this small hang up every single puppet, and costume nailed the grotesque and disturbing style of Silent Hill, but the movie’s biggest mistake was using the monster designs from the games, especially SH2. In case you are not aware of how Silent Hill works, the town serves as a twisted mirror into your psyche; it dredges up guilt, fear, and other negative feelings and gives them form. In the case of James Sunderland from Silent Hill 2 Pyramid Head represents his guilt, but when lifted out of the game’s context, and into the movie Pyramid head loses his meaning, and becomes just another bad guy. As for the film’s other effects there does seem to be reliance on CGI, but for a lot of them I don’t see how they could have achieved them practically. For example the oppressive fog that permeates the town of Silent Hill simply can’t be practically done, and if one were to try it’d cost millions in fog machines and would NEED to be filmed on an enclosed set. Also the CGI transition from the foggy Silent Hill to the dark Silent Hill is so well done in the movie, that every single game to follow has copied it.

Aided by the movie’s strong effects is the movie’s atmosphere. Arguably atmosphere is the most important part when making a Silent Hill movie. So much of the fear and tension created by the Silent Hill games is achieved through their oppressive surreal atmosphere, and the movie is no exception. The major contributing factors to Silent Hill’s creepy atmosphere are: the literal meteorological atmosphere of the town, and the ambient music used in the games. This is where the Silent Hill movie gets things right. The oppressively claustrophobic fog in the town very accurately emulates the game’s own, and most of the music in the movie is lifted directly from the games. Lifting this aspect straight from the games was a good idea in this case, because the music is well applied, and doesn't feel decontextualized like the Silent Hill monsters. The movie also makes sure to flawlessly emulate the grimy, dirty, and disturbing aesthetic of the Silent Hill franchise.  These all contribute to the Silent Hill movie’s perfectly nailed atmosphere.

The Silent Hill movie also really effectively mimics more of the game than just the atmosphere. The majority of the movie’s action follows the main character as they chase after a loved one following the most arcane and tenuous of clues. Such as a child’s drawing stuffed in a hotel room’s mailbox means that they need to check out that hotel room. This is exactly what the player does in the Silent Hill games (at the very least the 1^st two). Normally I would expect this sort of thing to feel forced and awkward in a movie setting, but this investigative storytelling is so elegantly executed I only noticed it upon my 3^rd or 4^th viewing. It achieves this by giving its character’s no alternative. They follow these tenuous and illogical clues, because it’s the best they've got. This also succeeds in amplifying the eerie feeling of being lost in a strange complex world.

Of course the movie isn't without its flaws. The B story involving the lead character’s husband (Christopher played by Sean Bean) feels really poorly integrated as he has little effect on the plot as a whole. His entire plot line serves exposition and no other purpose; this was probably because they needed more scenes with Sean to make his pay check worth it. In fact exposition is the movie’s biggest failing: the audience is kept in the dark about what caused Silent Hill to become Silent Hill up until about 10 minutes before the end when a character just explains how it all happened. This is a very clumsy and poor expositional choice, and it breaks the first rule of writing exposition: SHOW DON’T TELL (geez you’d think that professional writers would get this by now).

Overall Silent Hill is still the best videogame to movie adaptation I have ever seen. It manages to capture the feel of the game while still making enough changes to function as a standalone film. Its exposition is clunky, and a portion of the movie is wasted on Sean Bean’s character, but it still has the wonderfully creepy atmosphere, perfectly disturbing and gory visuals, and well adapted Silent Hill formula that a Silent Hill adaption really needs. Just don’t watch the sequel. No seriously Pyramid Head (the most imposing of all Silent Hill monsters) is reduced to the role of a guard dog chained to a Merry-go-round.