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Watched Silent Hill two nights ago ... I hope I'll finally be able to sleep again tonight.
This movie may be far from being the blending of Twin Peaks and Hellraiser it aspires to be, but it's still bloody effective, and it makes little compromise. Yes, there's a lot a crappy dialogue. Yes, there's little in the way of characterization. In fact, the main character of the computer game Silent Hill 2 was much more fleshed out then Rose, the Hero of the movie. Yes, Alice Krige basically plays the Borg Queen once again. And yes, towards the end, the movie just stops to give us about five minutes of background information on the plot, all narrated by one of the characters.
And still this movie is sublime in it's way. It's sublimity lies in the sickness of it's creatures and places, in the rotten, organic quality of the spirit-world it creates. In this respect, it's absolutely true to the game: Theres a place in the unconscious of the modern subject where raw matter and abstract ideas of the human condition meet. It's the place of absolute bodily desire and absolute horror, and Silent Hill truly embodies this unbearable ambivalence of flesh and spirit. In a way, it's more Lovecraftian than Lovecraft - at least if we look at it as linked to the magical, symbolic strand in Lovecrafts fiction.
Some if the things that struck me about the movie (positively and negatively):
The backstory was quite intelligent - but, as I said before, it wasn't distributed to well. To many information-dumps. But it was nevertheless something you could think about. It also created a nice anbivalence regarding the question if Rose did the "right thing" - or if there was a "right thing" to do.
Rose is a a pretty one-dimensional hero - She has no dark secret, and her motivation remains the same throughout the whole movie: to save Sharon. That's kind of a pity, expecially if you think of Silent Hill 2 where the creatures and places of the town represent the guilt-ridden unconscious of the main character. While the protagonist of Silent Hill 2 walked through his own nightmare, Rose basically walks through the nightmare of her adopted daugter. This could probably have been fixed by combining the characters of Rose and Dahlia.
There are some great stylistic elements, many of them lifted directly from the games - tilted camera angles, drawn-out fade-to-blacks. In the intensely nightmarish sequence about halfway through the film, there's also this deeply unsettling effect of "can't break free": When the "Janitor" (the extremely creepy creature on the school toilet) slowly and spastically approaches Rose, she's paralysed by shock. We don't really see how she gathers herself, breaks out of her paralysis (which would be a moment of relief). Instead, the movie goes from her being paralysed directly to her on the run again - a nice nightmarish touch: even though Rose must have managed somehow to gather herself, the moment disappears in the overall horror. There's only shock, terror, awe and running away. The same principle is repeated shortly thereafter at the approach of Pyramid-Head.
I loved the Janitor. I could swear he was in my room the last two nights. I was wonderfully afraid. It made me feel sublimely sick.
What didn't work was the final confrontation btw. Rose and Christabella. Just to cheesy, and to drawn out. The whole "burn her!" - "you must understand your own guilt" - "burn her! burn her!" thing was repetitive and should have been handled a lot more subtle.
On the other hand, the distanced look on Rose's face in the showdown was just perfect. She really looked like having crossed over to the other side of terror - now being part of the forces of horror herself.
The absence of male characters in the A-plot could have made for some interesting dynamics - with five central female characters, there was much potential for deviation from stereotypical female roles. But since the movie was so definitely about mothership, all of the female characters kind of got sucked into this paradigm - all different kind of mothers, but certainly all of them defined as or in relation to mothers. It's an interesting topic, but it would have been nice to add a female character who's not defined by her relation to "mothering" to the mix.
I felt a little let down that there was practically no original soundtrack music - most of it had been lifted directly from the games. Since I already own the soundtracks of all four games, I would have loved to get some new Silent-Hill-Music along with the movie.
I'm really quite happy with this movie. Not overwhelmed, but certainly not underwhelmed. It got the visuals right, and that's probably the most important thing to be said about it.
This movie may be far from being the blending of Twin Peaks and Hellraiser it aspires to be, but it's still bloody effective, and it makes little compromise. Yes, there's a lot a crappy dialogue. Yes, there's little in the way of characterization. In fact, the main character of the computer game Silent Hill 2 was much more fleshed out then Rose, the Hero of the movie. Yes, Alice Krige basically plays the Borg Queen once again. And yes, towards the end, the movie just stops to give us about five minutes of background information on the plot, all narrated by one of the characters.
And still this movie is sublime in it's way. It's sublimity lies in the sickness of it's creatures and places, in the rotten, organic quality of the spirit-world it creates. In this respect, it's absolutely true to the game: Theres a place in the unconscious of the modern subject where raw matter and abstract ideas of the human condition meet. It's the place of absolute bodily desire and absolute horror, and Silent Hill truly embodies this unbearable ambivalence of flesh and spirit. In a way, it's more Lovecraftian than Lovecraft - at least if we look at it as linked to the magical, symbolic strand in Lovecrafts fiction.
Some if the things that struck me about the movie (positively and negatively):
The backstory was quite intelligent - but, as I said before, it wasn't distributed to well. To many information-dumps. But it was nevertheless something you could think about. It also created a nice anbivalence regarding the question if Rose did the "right thing" - or if there was a "right thing" to do.
Rose is a a pretty one-dimensional hero - She has no dark secret, and her motivation remains the same throughout the whole movie: to save Sharon. That's kind of a pity, expecially if you think of Silent Hill 2 where the creatures and places of the town represent the guilt-ridden unconscious of the main character. While the protagonist of Silent Hill 2 walked through his own nightmare, Rose basically walks through the nightmare of her adopted daugter. This could probably have been fixed by combining the characters of Rose and Dahlia.
There are some great stylistic elements, many of them lifted directly from the games - tilted camera angles, drawn-out fade-to-blacks. In the intensely nightmarish sequence about halfway through the film, there's also this deeply unsettling effect of "can't break free": When the "Janitor" (the extremely creepy creature on the school toilet) slowly and spastically approaches Rose, she's paralysed by shock. We don't really see how she gathers herself, breaks out of her paralysis (which would be a moment of relief). Instead, the movie goes from her being paralysed directly to her on the run again - a nice nightmarish touch: even though Rose must have managed somehow to gather herself, the moment disappears in the overall horror. There's only shock, terror, awe and running away. The same principle is repeated shortly thereafter at the approach of Pyramid-Head.
I loved the Janitor. I could swear he was in my room the last two nights. I was wonderfully afraid. It made me feel sublimely sick.
What didn't work was the final confrontation btw. Rose and Christabella. Just to cheesy, and to drawn out. The whole "burn her!" - "you must understand your own guilt" - "burn her! burn her!" thing was repetitive and should have been handled a lot more subtle.
On the other hand, the distanced look on Rose's face in the showdown was just perfect. She really looked like having crossed over to the other side of terror - now being part of the forces of horror herself.
The absence of male characters in the A-plot could have made for some interesting dynamics - with five central female characters, there was much potential for deviation from stereotypical female roles. But since the movie was so definitely about mothership, all of the female characters kind of got sucked into this paradigm - all different kind of mothers, but certainly all of them defined as or in relation to mothers. It's an interesting topic, but it would have been nice to add a female character who's not defined by her relation to "mothering" to the mix.
I felt a little let down that there was practically no original soundtrack music - most of it had been lifted directly from the games. Since I already own the soundtracks of all four games, I would have loved to get some new Silent-Hill-Music along with the movie.
I'm really quite happy with this movie. Not overwhelmed, but certainly not underwhelmed. It got the visuals right, and that's probably the most important thing to be said about it.
