A video game movie that's not good?!?!?

ok ok...the acting blew ass but that movie was dead on silent hill. from the store fronts to the garbage bagged-like walls surrounding the city. Never have I seen such a well done adaptation. i played silent hill 2 a couple months back and was totally blown away at all the little things.

ok ok...something that gave the film sooo much more credibility, imo: the main character (rose) drives a jeep liberty, ok. product placement...no doubt! but what tickled my fancy was the connection, subtle as it may be. see, the license plate was "ohio" and the thing that made me feel like it was thought out a lil more than slapping a product into a flick was that the majority of jeeps that are assembled are done so at the plant in Toldeo, OH.

coincidence....nah.

3.5 out of 5

ooh; dont forget the music...ooh so, so startling and familar....

gasp

speaking as a true silent hill fanboy, I can say the movie hasn't disappointed me much. exactly what I was expecting. Mostly true to the game, with some liberties taken towards the end. I liked their take on the siren, but I'm not too sure on the whole "community" / sect still living there. What do they survive on?

Don't understand what you mean by "The music, while cheesy at parts" since about 99.9% of the music was taken (recycled?) from the games themselves. The Silent Hill 3 soundtrack frequently gets spinned at work so it was a treat for me to see it played with the movie

I'm not sure how this will do in terms of box office. If my town is any indication, this will totally flop. I'm not sure what else was premiering tonight, but there was 5, yes FIVE of us watching this movie in a 120-seats room.

Still the best damn game-to-movie adaption to come out in... ever? I'm glad they didn't screw up such a respected franchise (even with the questionable fourth outing)

God I love Pyramid Head. The ending was certainly gut-wrenching as well.

Nah Moooooooooooooooooooooooooooooortal Kooooooooooooooooooooooooooombat was way better it was cheesy for cheesys sake now thats a movie you could eat pizza and popcorn to

For those of us who haven't played Silent Hill, whats pyramid head?

Didn't they decide not to screen this movie for critics? That's not usually a good sign.

to #2

You're right about the jeep liberty.... it should have been a jeep wrangler, like the one Harry Mason drover in the first one. may be a small detail that's off, or maybe you never played the first one, but even the jeep had it's place in the movie.

As a fan of the series and a fan of cinema, I liked it. I think it was over all pretty well done and I think you're being a little too tough on it.

The movie sucked. I cringed during the whole thing. Made me feel embarrased to be a Silent Hill fan. Pyramid Head is the only thing worth seeing this for.

To be truthfull, I enjoyed the movie a lot and it didn't ruin the game for me. I loved the movie and I can't wait for it to come out on DVD.

First of all, I have to disagree on several different things. I felt that 'Rose' did actually quite well in the acting department, it's actually alot harder than it looks to pull off being scared, I felt she was very real. Cybil, not so much. Sean Bean's character could have uncovered a bit more about the towns past, but whatever. But overall he was there to give the sense that Rose was stuck in a separate dimension, since they were in the same room, but not at the same time.

As far as Rose in the "Scantily Clad Clothing" as you put it, she was supposed to have been sleeping and woke in the middle of the night to find her daughter missing. I don't know about you, but my wife doesn't sleep in some full body nighty that doesn't show any skin, of course she is going to be wearing some "Scantily Clad Clothing" when she is sleeping, not a moo-moo.

I'm not a complete Silent Hill fanboy or anything, I just happen to love the games, and I thought this movie did a very good job representing the games. Even the ending stayed true to the series and left you to wonder what will happen, it wasn't even really leaving itself open to a sequel.

I can see how a casual gamer who has only dabbled in the world of Silent Hill would think otherwise, but this film easily beats any other horror movie that has been put out in the last 6 years.

All you need to know...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_Head

David, you asked, "For those of us who haven't played Silent Hill, whats pyramid head?"

Pyramid Head is an enemy that you have to face when playing Silent Hill 2. He is a manifestation that James creates (James is the main character) from his own guilt for losing his wife Mary - in a way Pyramid Head is his own personal demon that he must fight, and because it is born out of guilt it is all powerful, and cannot be killed (in the game you cannot actually kill Pyramid Head). He is very powerful as a boss, and frightening as well because you can't kill him, only drive him away. You should play Silent Hill 2, it would be worth it just for Pyramid Head - and the amazing storyline.

I love how you went to see a VIDEO GAME MOVIE expecting Oscar-worthy acting. *laff

Whoa there cowboy! Prologue, not epilogue :) Epilogue is the aftermath!

You lost your credibility when you said you were excited for The DaVinci Code.

I want my Resident Evil movies!!

I hated it also, the dialogue was classic; after they walk into a room that was clearly caught on fire (like the rest of the town that caught on fire and is still burning underground) the cop says, "It looks like there was a fire here." I just wanted to reach into the silver screen and slap her and say, no shit, where did you get that idea?

This movie is shit but it should keep SH fans happy.

Oh and don't say it was bad or you will have an angry mob of SH fans with torches knocking on your door wanting to burn you @ the stake.

This review sums up my opinion fairly well. And just after all my SH-fanboy friends had almost brainwashed me out of it, too.

No matter how the game's dialogue was, there's no excuse for it being as crap as it was in this movie.

I do have to argue one point, though: while the line you quoted was good (and did make me and my buddy laugh aloud in the theater), I think by far the best has to be "FILTH AND LIES!!!!!!!"

Very well done production that stays true to the game series down to the atmosphere, characters, sets, monsters, music, everything! Finally we have a movie that fans of the game will appeciate as much as average movie goers, so this may be a good sign of things to come as far as video game based movies are concerned. I don't want to spoil anything so you should just watch the movie yourself first without reading any stupid reviews. Hopefully a lot of people will be talking about this movie later as it's truly great. If you found the movie interesting you can logically move on to play the games (1-3, not 4) to complete the experience.

I'm honestly amazed at the reviews the movie got. I absolutely LOVED IT. Aside from the church thing I thought the movie was spot on. The opening scene with her running down the alley/finding the body/being attacked and waking up in the diner? That's EXACTLY SCENE FOR SCENE with the game. Then Pyramid Head thrown in there made me cream my pants. I mean the movie had all stuff from the soundtrack AND the nurses...OWNAGE.

This is one movie i'd buy like the 3 disc set collectors edition dvd thing of.

Oh yeah,I forgot to add,the theatre here was PACKED. I mean PACKED. I was about to leave because me and my girlfriend walked around for like 10 minutes looking for empty seats.


Another funny thing was the part when she gets to the basement and goes through the door to Alessa where it goes bright white and silent. At this point some dude down in front yells out "Loading!".Place erupted in laughter.

Great!:
- Audio
- Music (taken right from the games..awesome!)
- Pyramid Head
- The other monsters
- The first hour and a half

Medium:
- Sean Bean's story arc
- The ending
- The Dialogue overall

Bad:
- A couple lines of dialogue


I don't think I've ever been so happy while watching a movie before. If you're a fan of Silent Hill some parts of this movie will make you down right giddy! Also, I personally love movies which don't wrap up everything nicely and hand you all the answers on a silver platter. Will you have questions about what the hell happened during the movie? Yes, but who cares, watch the movie again, or maybe even use your brain to figure it out.

Finally, I don't know why everyone is making such a big deal about the length of this movie. 90% of the movies these days are 2 hours plus. Silent Hill doesn't feel to long or too short, its about right. But, I could tell you one movie that could have been cut in half..it ends with Kong and starts with King.

I rather liked the movie. It's easy to come down like a ton of bricks on a video game adaptation, and, to be fair, the acting ranged wildly from good, to "What the holy hell is wrong with this little girl?"

The only real problem is that the movie is neither consistantly bad, nor good. It's really well done in some parts, such as tense scenes with Pyramid Head or the Nurses, and then in the infamous "Look at me, I'm burning" bit, it just seems cheesy and campy.

Not to mention that damn cop. "You know, they say this town used to be haunted."
REALLY? NO SHIT? What clued you in, officer? That giant Pyramid Headed thing that tried to kill us? Or maybe the fact that the town keeps disintigrating into rusty, blood red metal all around us? *SLAP*

All in all, I enjoyed the movie, though. I've seen far worse, in either the Horror or Video Game genre. It stayed VERY true to the game, even including on scene where the even copied a camera angle while Rose is coming around a corner. (Silent Hill 1, the very begining of the game.) A nice little 'homage' to the intensity and paranoia those games made ALL of us feel.

I give it a 7 of 10. Could have been better, some times the acting and the script failed, but all in all, worth your 7 bucks.

I just watched this movie and I believe it adapted itself to the game pretty closely. I only played the first game and I automatically knew what was going to happen next in the first part. We the alley and the school. The only thing that kind of bother me is the ending in that, but also is the little girl evil or good???

Its a 3.5/5 ill probably buy it and I hope they make a directors cut or something.

I loved this movie. The only Silent Hill I have played is the original, and I felt like I was revisiting the game all over again in some parts. Two thumbs up!

For the most part, my audience reacted appropriately, except for one guy who's cell phone kept going off. The only part I laughed at was when Cybil came out of that room that pyramid head was stabbing into and she said "what the f***?".

I liked it. I didn't think the acting was bad at all, but the writing was cliche in some spots. I was surprised and happy to hear so much music taken directly from the games. My only gripe is that the characters and some scenes were much more intense and less ethereal than the games were, but I guess that's too be expected with live action. Everything was very in-your-face. While the games hinted at crazy shit that happened, the movie shows you crazy shit happening.

And I thought the length was fine. I was hoping it would be nice and long and rich, but that's just the Silent Hill fan in me I guess. I agree with Stewy that King Kong was way too freakin' long and drawn out.

We actually had sold out showings today. I bought my tickets a day early. Yes, the dialogue wasn't that great, but EVERYTHING else in the movie made up for it.

GO SEE IT.

This is a sweet movie. After watching Silent Hill, me and some friends sat down to a showtime late night horror movie called 'Vampires: The Turning'. Silent Hill has wonderful acting, special effects, and pretty decent dialogue-- a supurb example of how to do an adaptation. Trust me, if any of you actually sat down to see a truly horrible horror film, you'd understand how important the craft is (and how dead on Silent Hill nails it.)

Plus, Anna is so fucking awesome.

I absolutely loved the movie, yes some parts were cheesy(really, you're on fire, no ways), but what can you do, I like how it didnt scare you in the traditional way, it just messed with your mind. Pyramid Head and his Zwiehandler butter knife was a very nice touch and i like how they combined all the games, cept 4, which was going to be a SH game tile half way through production. More fear elements would've been nice, they could've left out the husband comepletely and made it more off of her story. The audio it was a masterpiece, seriously, this movies sfx and musical scores were so precise that it made everything better in the end. Though there should be more explinations of things for those people who dont normally play Silent Hill games as well as more info into the Reaper.

Saw it today and loved it. Atleast a 4 outa 5. I'm definetly going to buy it when it comes out on DVD.

OMG I'm cool because I hate Dan Brown and Da Vinci Code!

Seriously though, I see a lot of Dan Brown hating going on. His books aren't that bad, so why the hell does everyone keep saying stuff like "You lost your credibility when you said you were excited for The DaVinci Code"? Probably just because they are popular and some idiots like to feel they are "different".

In relation to the actual news, well, nothing new. Pretty much what I was expecting from yet another videogame to movie adaptation.

Before any more people go on to comment the film, can you at least specify have you played the game and are you a fan of the series? That makes the credibility of the comments a lot better. Not saying that fans will be biased but they may hold a different perspective towards the movie. I want to watch it with some friends who have NEVER played the games, being a fan of SH myself, I don't want to drag them to a boring or crappy movie at the end of the school year.

I've played through all four Silent Hill's and saw the movie last night. Here's the deal: The movie is very atmospheric and it really does capture the creepiness of the Silent Hill franchise. The music is superb because the Japanese director that does the music for the game did it for the movie.... but beyond those two positive points not much works.

The story is very hokey - the plot line is about as thick as porno movie. I thought the main character Rose(Radha Mitchell) was very good, but every other actor, including veteran Sean Bean, just was not very good. This could have been due to a poor script as well.

Was this is the most accurate and true video-game to movie adaptation? Sure. The first hour feels like it was lifted directly from the video-game. The scene when Rose first enters the "darkness" and chases Sharon down an alley was taken directly from the game (And in my opinion this was the best scene in the movie). Really and truly, when they went away from the games story and style, the movie got crappy... fast.

It seems like the opinions on this posting have been mixed and I can understand that. My problem is this: I cannot and don't want to recommend this movie to a non-SH-gamer. If you're a fan of the games, it's worth a showing, but don't expect genius.

The credibility of the comments are completely unrelated to whether or not a commentor has played the games, Cyber Sniper.

I'm an apologist for the film, though. It's neither as cerebral or confusing as many people have claimed, but instead a rather simple story about guilt and the inability to escape it. The story itself isn't lame, as Ross writes, but the plot -- the way the story is presented to the audience -- makes some missteps and kind of breaks its own legs with too much exposition. Still, it's a movie about symbology and interpretations of hell, and I think it worked beautifully.

I agree with Cyber Sniper. How about you, Ross? What's your experience with the series and what's your general opinion on it?

I haven't seen it myself yet, but some of the reviews I've read seem overly dismissive and patronizing because the film's based on a videogame. Some choice quotes:

"The profoundly goofy Silent Hill is the latest entry in the spooks-stole-my-kid genre that has inexplicably been sweeping Hollywood of late. And it might just be the dumbest -- but then it is based on a video game, so that's hardly surprising." -- Toronto Star

"Let’s start with the running time for “Silent Hill”: two hours and five minutes. Totally out of control. No horror movie should be longer than an Oscar winner for best picture unless it’s, like, “The Exorcist.” (“Crash” was just 107 minutes when it came out last year, in case you’re curious.) It should max out around 83 minutes — 85, tops." -- Associated Press

Firstly, 125 minutes is NOT long for a movie. Secondly, I think it's a bit silly to say certain types of movies should be longer (Oscar winners only please!) and others should be shorter. Daft.

"Arresting images devoid of context, consequence or conscience may make "Silent Hill" the most faithful adaptation of a video game to the big screen ever made" -- Salt Lake Tribune

Wow. That one's just insulting.

And let's not even consider Roger Ebert who just used his review as a platform for his ongoing "videogames aren't art" crusade.

Yeah, all of the reviews do make me kinda of sick. You know they all are anti-video game movies, which they have good reason, but this one should be an exception. I wonder what reviews these people gave the multiple sequeuls to Final Destination, or the ring 1 & 2.

I admit that I didn't read most of the other comments to this blog but I'm a Silent Hill die hard and Pyrimid Head wasn't in the first Silent Hill he was in the second. Also, Silent Hill 2 had nothing to do with 1 and 3. But to its credit Silent Hill 2 is a good game that could have truly terrorized at points but didn't.
Also one of the aspects of the Silent Hill Story that makes it heart wrenching at the end of SH 3 is the fact that Harry's wife was dead in part 1 and he dies horribly in part 3 after going to great lengths to prevent his "daughter's" dark legacy. There was no community in SH1. The town was deserted except for the nurse that realized she was already dead after she went into the basement of the hospital, The girl's crazy ass mom that was creep even on the PS1, the asshole doctor that was also trying to resurrect that crazy god and the cop that just got caught up in the whole mess.

Pyrimid Head didn't even show up until SH2 and the main character was the only one that could see him. The fat kid, the little girl and young woman never saw pyrimid head or the crazy nurses with the babies growing out of their backs.

Forgive me for not remembering the names but I played through Silent Hill 1 through 3 years ago. I've always liked the story and the bizarre, demented b-movies atmoshpere. In many ways I like Silent Hill more than Resident Evil but just the fact the Harry's wife is alive totally screws up the story if they make a sequel based on Silent Hill 3.

I saw some reviewers equate this to an Uwe Boll film.

And that idea is about as difficult to comprehend as believing in scientology.

Pancakeshouse wrote:

"I don't know about you, but my wife doesn't sleep in some full body nighty that doesn't show any skin, of course she is going to be wearing some "Scantily Clad Clothing" when she is sleeping, not a moo-moo."

PIX?! KTHXBYE! :)

Anyways, to keep on subject, I saw the movie yesterday and thought it was awesome. I find it kind of funny how people are talking it down. I can't think of a better horror movie made in the past 5 years, the movie Saw I guess would be a pretty close second. It was actually scary. Being a Silent Hill fan, it was a double bonus.

I can't wait till a Director's Cut or unrated version is out. I'm really curious to what they cut out to make it either R or just less offensive. Hopefully it involves Pyramind Head.

I believe the movie was very very very good for Silent Hill players because it was almost *exactly* what the players of the series have come to expect.

Silent Hill storylines have never been clear or give everything away, and the acting, IMO, was awesome.

I'm glad a lot of you guys are really digging the movie, but I'm also pretty sad that you are. The movie is a piece of junk and if this is thought of as the best of game-to-film adaptations, tis a sadder day for the genre.

It never once lets itself actually be scary. Any time it threatens to become scary, Gans cuts to Sean Bean in the safe, light-filled world, wandering around like a dofus.

The creatures are amazing, but they simply get a very brief introduction and are then forgotten. Pyramid Head was the coolest thing about the movie, and even then his total screen time hovers around 4 minutes.

The movie suffers from way too much exposition. Too many times did it grind the movie to a halt to try to answer questions the viewer was never asking. We know it's a horrible, nonsensical fantasy world, so why bother trying to make sense of it? You've just removed all the fear of the unknown.

Hell, Rose falls asleep during the film's graphic climax. Are you serious? The movie finally lets it all go and breaks past any refrained insanity and you have our proxy to the action fall asleep and wake up when its all over? Fuck that.

So much squandered potential.

Sean Bean was only put in because the original script had no male characters, so the production company sent it back with a note saying "there's no men in this script!"

I have never played any of the Silent Hill videogames myself and perhaps that is why I didn’t like this movie. From the perspective of a 'movie' the acting is cheesy at best; the story makes almost no sense and worst of all its not at all scary. My tagline for this movie "lets see how much pointless nonsense and horrific imagery we can throw on the screen at once and see if it works". Unfortunately it does not.

Never played the games.

With the crap that has been coming out recently in the horror genre, from snuff films like Hostel to garbage like the Ring sequel, it's nice to see a good twitch suspense movie.

At times this movie feels like Saw or Seven (both excellent thriller movies) but then switches to a gorefest like the Hellraiser movies.

the thing to remember is that, like the Ring, this is based off a Japanese story so you can expect lots of ghosts, spirits, and demons that don't fit with a typical Cristian view that most americans have.

It's an excellent ghost story with WAY too much gore, which makes it feel like one of the old horror movies from the early 90's. (lol, isn't that the time when the game came out?)

Overall:
>good if you like suspense
>too much gore (Saw 2 had less gore...)
>limited use of CG effects (ah the power of red cornsyrup and latex masks...)

fav movie: The Thing (1982)

striderhayasa

Thanks asshole. I was planning on playing the games after seeing the movie and being surprised. No chance of that now. Nothing like ruining 3 games in one paragraph. I hope pyramid head comes to your house.

I'm a fan of the games, which I suppose added to my enjoyment of the film, but I've talked to friends who've never once played any of the games and they enjoyed the movie quite a bit.

I actually liked the movie a lot more than I expected. It got a bit silly at the end when it deviated a little too much from the plot of the game, but overall I thought it captured the atmosphere of Silent Hill really well, and the details that they did directly incorporate were spot-on.

I'm a bit upset but not surprised that most official critics are brushing it off as "just a stupid game movie", because I think it's a much better film than that. It's pretty irresponsible to say something in a venue that will convince a lot of people not to try out the movie, but that's life, I guess :/

In any case, count me as a supporter. I had a great time at the movie :)

3 out of 4 stars.

lol! my bad terry, I didn't realize anyone would care for spoilers since the movie is out and the games are old news. If you liked the movie but didn't play the games, playing them afterward could make you hate the film. There are things that the games revealed that I haven't heard anyone mention in any of their posts. I was thinking of seeing the film today but then thought better of it because I can't see how the film is getting such good comments for the adaption. The one main point that justified the third sequel is Harry's wife died years before he went back to Silent Hill. You don't even find out that it wasn't his real daughter until 3/4 of the way through the game. The fact that she's alive kills the whole story. The conclusion to SH3 worked because his wife was long dead and Harry did research after SH1 to truly find out what he was up against. I didn't read anyone mention why the girl (sorry I can't remember the names, it's been so long since I played it) was burned so badly and why she would die. Her soul basically was split in half and it was a power/spell that she used because she didn't want to give birth to that god/demon. Her mother wasn't powerful enough to give birth to it herself so the honor was her's because her daughter was the chosen. But there were people in that crazy town/cult that knew that it wasn't a god of light that they were trying to resurrect, it was a god of destruction...play the games anyway. They're better in many ways than RE. You have to see how it all unfolds and trust me, what I mentioned here is nothing compared to what you see in SH1 and in SH3. There are scenes in SH3 that are downright disturbing. Play SH2 as a side story since it has nothing to do with 1 and 3.

oh and terry, Pyramid Head is a punk in the game. Far too easy to kill, his rape scene was good though. I saw it for the first time at e3 in 2001 on a 30 ftx30 foot screen at the Konami booth.

I might be biased caused I love Brotherhood of the Wolf, but I thought the direction was astonding. The way it was filmed was amazing. I thought the audio suffered because it hurt my ears too much hahaha, but there were some parts that were amazing, like the use of the sirens. But yeah, it was pretty bad when the whole theatre errupted in laughter when she goes:

"Looks like there was a fire." after spending 5 minutes in a charred room.