Deborah Kara Unger, whoever did the location scouting, and the production design team all deserve laud for a job well done. Laurie Holden was great casting for Cybil, except that she (and Pyramid Head) were in the wrong game/film. And of course, the wonderful score and visual setups that were ripped straight from Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2; Akira Yamaoka and Mary Elizabeth Mcglynn are magic makers.
I tried watching this again, knowing that it was an abomination, and I was pleasantly surprised at how decent-to-inoffensive it was... until shortly after they reach Silent Hill. And what exactly was the point in gender-swapping the protagonist (only for the studio to force Sean Bean and inspector barberson into the film, bloating it and ruining the consistent tone and feeling of surreal and lost isolation) when the cast ends up as basically a split monogender boys-then-girls affair?
Not that that was the only thing that ruined the immersion and tone. The film basically goes off the rails shortly after the sirens start to go off. They needlessly strayed entirely too far from the source material, and ended up with an idiotic and inconsistently written protagonist. I wanted to slap her every time she became hysterical and started shaking a chain link fence, screaming "help me!!" Fucking who exactly are you calling out to? And then, just a couple of scenes after that and crying on a floor, she's all level headed pragmatist next to a now freaking out Cybil. There's also just far too much screaming and crying. This is Silent Hill, not some slasher film. The protagonists are all mentally muted concussed sleepwalkers. It creates a surreal, otherworldly, dreamlike feel to the games, and this just completely missed that in every respect except for Dahlia.
In the end, it does several things right, but stumbles far too often, and far too fatally, and consistently, to be anywhere near a good adaptation. For these same reasons, it just doesn't work well as a film, even if you tried to watch it as an original horror film.
Review by LNeroBlockedParent2023-11-02T02:58:33Z
Deborah Kara Unger, whoever did the location scouting, and the production design team all deserve laud for a job well done. Laurie Holden was great casting for Cybil, except that she (and Pyramid Head) were in the wrong game/film. And of course, the wonderful score and visual setups that were ripped straight from Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2; Akira Yamaoka and Mary Elizabeth Mcglynn are magic makers.
I tried watching this again, knowing that it was an abomination, and I was pleasantly surprised at how decent-to-inoffensive it was... until shortly after they reach Silent Hill. And what exactly was the point in gender-swapping the protagonist (only for the studio to force Sean Bean and inspector barberson into the film, bloating it and ruining the consistent tone and feeling of surreal and lost isolation) when the cast ends up as basically a split monogender boys-then-girls affair?
Not that that was the only thing that ruined the immersion and tone. The film basically goes off the rails shortly after the sirens start to go off. They needlessly strayed entirely too far from the source material, and ended up with an idiotic and inconsistently written protagonist. I wanted to slap her every time she became hysterical and started shaking a chain link fence, screaming "help me!!" Fucking who exactly are you calling out to? And then, just a couple of scenes after that and crying on a floor, she's all level headed pragmatist next to a now freaking out Cybil. There's also just far too much screaming and crying. This is Silent Hill, not some slasher film. The protagonists are all mentally muted concussed sleepwalkers. It creates a surreal, otherworldly, dreamlike feel to the games, and this just completely missed that in every respect except for Dahlia.
In the end, it does several things right, but stumbles far too often, and far too fatally, and consistently, to be anywhere near a good adaptation. For these same reasons, it just doesn't work well as a film, even if you tried to watch it as an original horror film.