Silent Hill
August 18th 2006 00:19
I saw Silent Hill tonight. Not sure about this one. Tries too hard. One of those, lets-throw-several-genres-tog ether-and-try-and-be-really-c lever kinda movies.
Mostly it’s a horror flick. Albeit a more surreal and intense one that normally comes out of Hollywood. This is a co-production with probably too many chefs in the kitchen, all stirring at the computer generated imagery and narrative atmosphere.
Based on a Japanese video game that I am not familiar with at all, but then I’ve never been much into video games. Directed by Christophe Gans who made the historical, lycanthropic, bodice-ripping Gaelic monstrosity that was Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001), and earlier the live action version of the Manga cult fave Crying Freeman (1995).
One part The Wicker Man (1973), one part The Cell (2000), one part Hellraiser (1987), Silent Hill plays out as a bad dream, complete with a fabric of time and space that is frequently being punctured. But don’t think Dario Argento, this one plays way too safe for that. Despite a handful of viscerally impressive sequences, a reasonably gutsy performance from Radha Mitchell, and some haunting imagery, the film ultimately fails as the reasoning behind the Darkness and chaos is unconvincingly, implausibly delivered in the film’s final quarter.
And several times throughout the movie characters do stupid things. This is fine when you’re watching a routine stalk’n’slash flick, but when the movie is trying to be artful and psychologically resonant, it grates most horribly.
Somnambulistic daughter leads mother into isolation and unsettling confusion, encountering horrific spectres and nasty demons, then embroiled in witchcraft and further supernatural weirdness, inexorably being engulfed in a pseudo-religious frenzy. Sheeesh, I’m making it sound a lot more interesting than it really is.
Call me old fashioned, but the best horror movies are pretty simple. What was screenwriter Roger Avary thinking? He’s currently directing his adaptation of Brett Easton Ellis’s brilliant fashion-terrorism nightmare Glamorama, an surreal urban horror if ever there was one, but that’s a blog for later, I’m sure.
Mostly it’s a horror flick. Albeit a more surreal and intense one that normally comes out of Hollywood. This is a co-production with probably too many chefs in the kitchen, all stirring at the computer generated imagery and narrative atmosphere.
Based on a Japanese video game that I am not familiar with at all, but then I’ve never been much into video games. Directed by Christophe Gans who made the historical, lycanthropic, bodice-ripping Gaelic monstrosity that was Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001), and earlier the live action version of the Manga cult fave Crying Freeman (1995).
One part The Wicker Man (1973), one part The Cell (2000), one part Hellraiser (1987), Silent Hill plays out as a bad dream, complete with a fabric of time and space that is frequently being punctured. But don’t think Dario Argento, this one plays way too safe for that. Despite a handful of viscerally impressive sequences, a reasonably gutsy performance from Radha Mitchell, and some haunting imagery, the film ultimately fails as the reasoning behind the Darkness and chaos is unconvincingly, implausibly delivered in the film’s final quarter.
And several times throughout the movie characters do stupid things. This is fine when you’re watching a routine stalk’n’slash flick, but when the movie is trying to be artful and psychologically resonant, it grates most horribly.
Somnambulistic daughter leads mother into isolation and unsettling confusion, encountering horrific spectres and nasty demons, then embroiled in witchcraft and further supernatural weirdness, inexorably being engulfed in a pseudo-religious frenzy. Sheeesh, I’m making it sound a lot more interesting than it really is.
Call me old fashioned, but the best horror movies are pretty simple. What was screenwriter Roger Avary thinking? He’s currently directing his adaptation of Brett Easton Ellis’s brilliant fashion-terrorism nightmare Glamorama, an surreal urban horror if ever there was one, but that’s a blog for later, I’m sure.
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Comment by Cibbuano
20/20 Filmsight
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Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
I sooooo hope Roger Avary does a decent job, cos it's a KILLER novel.
Pretty extreme in many places, but then so was American Psycho (even more so), and I felt Mary Harron did an extraordinary job of directing and co-screenwriting that adaptation. A rare, rare example of a movie being more concise and insightful than the original novel.
As for Glamorama, well, I hope he casts well! The character of sexy espionage femme fatale Jaime gave me wet dreams and nightmares for months! LOL
Comment by Eva W.
Life in Germany
The plot was so convoluted and strange that it just made no sense. No amount of thinking and concentrating helped me to figure out what exactly was going on (mostly towards the end).
At least I got a bit creeped out by it, but my friends didn't even find it scary. They actually laughed their heads off throughout, because they thought it was so absurd.
Maybe basing a movie on a video game is simply a bad idea (isn't it usually the other way around?).
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
yeah on the whole filmmakers should leave videogames alone. There are very,. very few that actually translate well to cinema.