Silent Hill: The Movie, A Retrospective Look At a Great Piece of Shit.
Anybody who has gotten to know will tell you that I like Silent Hill, a lot. Like, if it was a woman I'd probably marry it(Or simply lavish her with far too much attention resulting in restraining orders. Let's be realistic). I will be the first to admit that I dick ride that series HARD and I'm damn proud of it. I love the series so much, the stories, the characters, the monsters, the art direction, atmosphere, music, ambiance, it's all stellar. Even the American made Silent Hill Origins was pretty great for not being made by the Silent Hill team. Honestly, I could go on and on about it all day and all night if I wanted to. Long story short, I digs it like whoa.

However, if there is one thing in this world that I love as much as I hate(Other than my penis. The ability to frivolously pee absolutely anywhere ranks up there for one of the coolest things ever) it's the Silent Hill movie. Now don't get me wrong, as far as movie adaptations of video games go, it's pretty decent. Pretty fucking decent. Then again it's up against Uwe Boll movies, so saying that isn't really saying anything at all. I waited on pins and needles for this movie to come out. I even wanted to believe the fake movie poster that got its own thread on the Silent Hill Forum was real, despite how absolutely goofy it was and it had Johnny Depp on it. So I waited and waited, got stoked when the teaser was released and watched it about a thousand times. And then it happened. It was coming out! And on the same day that the long awaited sequel to my all time favorite game ever, EarthBound, was hitting Japanese stores(I don't even want to get started on that). It could have easily been the best day ever. It was probably one of the few, if not only time I went to a movie on opening night. When the intro kicked on and played the beginning of the very beautiful theme to the first game, I was insane with delight. Surely this was going to be fantastic.

To be fair the first half of the movie was a fairly adequate recreation of the beginning of the first game, which was obviously what the movie is based on. We are introduced to Rose DeSilva and her incredibly unimportant husband character played by the biggest actor in the movie(Sean Bean). Rose is obviously suppose to be Harry Mason, the epitome of Twin Peaks inspired badassitude. I didn't mind Rose as a protagonist, I mean I'd rather have Harry, but I can understand the whole "searching for the lost daughter" scenario appeases to the general public more if its the mother as opposed to the "who-dun-it" novelist father figure. Okay, whatever. The first lines spoken in the movie are Rose's panicked screams for her sleep-wandering daughter, Sharon.

Let me get something out in the air. If you want to make an adaptation for a pre-existing story as a movie that's already in some other form of media, that's fine. I really have no problem with it. I can understand cutting things from the story to account for time and budget and all that jazz. I get it. I got it. I really do. Honest. This is what I have a problem with, and this seems to be the constant norm with video game based movies...They completely remake the story. Is that REALLY necessary? In most cases, it's not done with book movies, so why video game movies? That is what I don't get. Sharon's name in the game was Cheryl. It's not the case of changing the character so drastically that a new identity is required entirely, i.e. Rose. But rather, it's the same exact character, pretty much. Why change the name? Just keep it Cheryl. This isn't even a constant device for the rest of the movie. Dahlia and Cybil are in the movie too, and yet their names are unchanged. Even Alessa's, story focal point character, name isn't changed and her and Cheryl are essentially the same person. So why use this device for this one character? Whatev'.

When Sean Bean is on screen, it comes very close to taking me out of the movie, as I can only think of Borimir. When he's attempting to talk Rose out of taking "Sharon" to Silent Hill all I can imagine is the scene in Fellowship when Borimir wets his pantaloons at the mention of Mordor. Leaning in with a cheese-eating pedosmile on his face, as it's clearly mentally disturbed him far greater than actually being there, and begins to read off his laundry list of complaints about their destination. If he had performed the same exact scene in this over the phone to Rose, it would have made the movie infinitely better. "Silent Hill..with mumblers wandering the streets waiting to slash and gouge at the slightest notion..fog..that blots out the sun..and Pyramid Head, not just your run-of-the-mill monster but a rapist with an agenda..!" Look, I don't remember his laundry list from Fellowship word for word, so take it or leave it.

The entering of the town is pretty spot on to how it goes down in the game, so it does get kudos points there. The fog, the sirens, even Rose getting chased throw a lighter-lit corridor walled by chain-link fence to eventually get gangulated by a mob of impish asshole monsters. All the way up to her even waking up in some stank dive. I was even happy to see that a few landmarks were in place and shown, as were the names of some of the streets and even the elementary school was called Midwich. I think I might have been more stoked to see they made a likeness of Nathans Drugs than I was to actually see monsters(Which was a lame rip off but not the same as the children monsters in the first game). What wasn't I happy about? The ash. The constant raining ash and the persistent mentioning of how there's some jive crazy fire burning beneath the ghost town. Guess what didn't happen in the games. That. Guess where that happened. Centralia, Pennsylvania. Would it have really been that difficult to use the rich back story of the town in the games instead of typing in "ghost towns" in a search engine and find a back story that exists in a real town? I guess it would have been. The falling specks in the first game were snow. It was snowing. In fact, Harry and some other character(I'm thinking Dr. Kauffman, for whatever reason was left out of the movie) make mention of how it's snowing and it's about as unseasonal as the weather can get and then make mention of how incredibly unseasonal weather is a very bad omen. It's there, you fucks. Look it up!

On the plus side, I think the only character who wasn't fucked with too bad in the whole movie was Cybil. She has the same name, same look, almost same everything really. Plus, she has more face time in the movie than she did in the game and they made her a raging bulldyke, but a raging bulldyke you could bring home to momma! And she was pretty attractive. They even gave her one of the series' biggest icons and that's the flashlight you put in a breast pocket. All in all, she's rad. I have no beefs with her.

Dahlia however is a different story. For those who don't know, Dahlia is the villain of the first game and probably by far the most dangerous one there has been due to how cunning and knowledgeable she was. She was Alessa's mother, but she and Dr. Kaufman devised a plan to make Alessa the messiah of the infamous Silent Hill cult and make her the mother of their god. Though they were doing it so that they themselves could attain power as opposed to bring salvation and enlightenment to the cult members. Well in the movie Dahlia is nomadic hobo who looks really awesome(In fact her look inspired me for a particular character in something I'm writing) but sucks it bad. Though at least she looked way better than she did in Silent Hill Origins. Why does she suck? Because she's not villainous, nor is she entirely important to the story for the most part. She's just sort of there and everyone hates her because she likes sex. Or used to, I don't know the rules with homeless broads and sex. Basically in the movie her sister is the villain, her sister tries to sacrifice Alessa because she's a bastard or some shit, it fails, accidentally starting the fire, setting the town ablaze for a while, which starts the OMFG PERMA-COAL FIRE, and gives the other incredibly useless character(a certain Thomas Gucci who meanders around with Borimir) actual connection to the story as he's the one who "rescues" Alessa even though she already looks like beef jerky. So Alessa makes a "deal with the devil" as it were to fuck some ngrs up. Everybody got that? So yeah, the story is much more stupid in the movie. But who expected it to be good? Not like Roger Avery wrote the screenplay or anything. I mean, he's a nobody! What did he write?! Pulp FUCKING Fiction, that's what. Or at least him and Tarantino. I surely am a stupid asshole for assuming someone who wrote a good movie would write a good movie. Why couldn't the cult stay the same? Why did they suddenly have to become Puritans? And why show so much of them?! It's like half the fucking movie! They're not as interesting as the original. Use the original cult!

Pyramid Head. Oh boy...First of all, he doesn't belong in this movie. The story has absolutely nothing to do with him what-so-ever. He was strictly for the second game in the series, which should have been the actual movie in the first place. He has absolutely nothing to do with the story of the first one, so why would he have something to do with an even shittier story based off of the story he had nothing to do with? Now, I loves me some Pyramid Head. In fact, he terrifies me to no end and often times in nightmares he is involved in some way and it's always ultimate scary for realsies. The movie Pyramid Head, OH WAIT I'M SORRY "THE RED PYRAMID" IS HIS NAME IN THE MOVIE, BECAUSE IT'S OBVIOUS THEY ONLY PLAYED THE FIRST 15 MINUTES OF EACH GAME, doesn't scare me at all. This could partly be because they pimped his ride, and by his ride I mean him. They redesigned him and tried to make him look more like a badass than an actual nightmare. Now, I wouldn't want to fight either one, but I would think you would want to go for the scarier look. Racing stripes aren't scary, they're tacky. However, THE RED BUTT-FUCKING PYRAMID, actually does have one intensely awesome scene, and I do believe it is my friend John who even made it as awesome as it was. So there's a character named Anna(who as soon as she's introduced brings the whole movie down hard so I will not elaborate anymore on her than I have to because she's a big stupid doodoo head) who accompanies Rose and Cybil on their aimless quest through Centralia Hill to find Rose's daughter who doesn't even know her own name, poor thing. So there's an awful scene where they reveal the source of the sirens as being the cult's church, and as all the lame Puritan silly-nannies are running into the church to escape the coming darkness(I thought they meant the band "The Darkness" was in town, because I'd run too) and our favorite vagrant(Best title anyone could ever have? Maybe) Dahlia was trying to ramble on about not trusting the cult to our heroines as hobo-esque as possible. So what does Anna do? Throw rocks at her, like any adult does when someone differs in opinion. The darkness(evil, not the band. lol contradiction) sweeps over them and Dahlia points at Anna, so who takes shape behind her but the Red Pyramid himself. And finally he does something note worthy. He picks Anna up by the neck, walks up the stairs, says SOMETHING in a crazy metallic, voice and rips her dress off. Now within only a second or two he then rips her skin off with his bare hands and whips the bloody hide at the doors of the church. Brilliant. However, it was within this second or two, when she was dangling in the air in her birthday suit that my friend John exclaimed, in the theater, "FINALLY!". You see, apparently he thought that Rose and Cybil were going to have lots of sex at one point and had been waiting on the edge of his seat for any form of female sexuality. His desire rose to astronomical proportions until the quick flash of nude girl flesh aroused such a reaction from him. It was glorious.

Cristabella was the villain and she makes baby Jesus cry. Not because she's an evil bitch but because she's stupid. She was a made up character for the movie and an awful one at that. I hope the actress gets raped by razor wire for real.

Possessed children stopped being scary after the first Exorcist, it's a sad fact I know, horror writers, but you need to learn to let go and cope.

Lisa Garland made a cameo and that made me very happy.

The girl who played "Sharon" and Alessa is a horrible horrible actress despite what Radha Mitchell says and I hope she never gets work again.

The movie's soundtrack, except for one Johnny Cash song, is all music from the games. So it's all fantastic and awesome. And it's also all done by Akira Yamaoka! How weird that some American D-bag, who I don't care enough about to look up, took credit for the music in the ending credits. I'm sure he feels real accomplished.

Also, the guy who designed the movie monsters is a tool. He took credit for monster designs from the actual games instead of the lame ones he made himself. He was also the guy who played The Red butt-fucking Pyramid and the pointless janitor, Colin. So in one movie he played two different creatures who were/are rapists and then he raped the original monster designs? I can't even decide if that's ironic or not.

Roger Avery was the only person in the special features who flat out said that the story in the movie is different. So unfortunately that makes me like him a little more.

Cristophe Gans obviously didn't know anything about the games like he claimed he did. Brotherhood of the Wolf was awesome, dude, what happened to you?

You know what? I don't love this movie at all! In fact I hate it even more now! I hope everything dies!