I disagree about Silent Hill. I like the characters and the story and it has grown on me over time. Artwise Silent Hill is far superior film and I don't just mean the atmosphere and the stuff. The script is also better written which actually pays homage to the cryptic dialogue you find in the game too.
Also, I think a lot of people who are fans of the first game fail to realize that it would not be possible to be 100% faithful to the plot due to its length. You still see the plot being somewhat faithful up to the school area, at which point it starts to deviate more.
I also think there's a bit of a question with what ending you would've stuck with in the end. Some fans would've bickered a bad ending had been better, others a good ending. The solution is then to of course make an original ending.
Let's rethink the plot of SH again: Harry wakes up in his car and finds his daughter gone. He explores the nearby area and are attacked by monsters. He dies.
- This scene exists but is somewhat redone to fit the plot progression better.
Harry then wakes up in the bar and finds Cybil with him. They talk, Cybil leaves.
- This scene exists in the film. After Rose wakes up in the car, she's accompanied by Cybil. They are later separated. The order of these two scenes are thus reversed.
Harry explores Silent Hill. Has to find the key to the dog house because he realizes Silent Hill is shut off from the outer world as several roads have collapsed into a ravine.
- This scene exists in the film, as Rose tries to leave Silent Hill she realizes she cannot leave. She also meets Dahlia here. The dog house element is omitted and replaced by Rose finding a picture that Dark Alessa drew in order to help Rose figure out where to go next.
Harry finds the dog house key only to realize he must now find three more keys in order to walk through the dog house.
-This is omitted and I agree why it should be. It would just be awkward to have Rose search through the town for keys and would just slow down the pace of the film even further. While I agree that there could have been more exploration of the Fog World, I assume part of the reason why we do not see all of Silent Hill is because of budget restraints. They can reconstruct parts of the town but an entire town is a bit too ambitious.
Harry takes off to the church. Has an encounter with Dahlia. She tells him where to go next and gives him important items.
- This scene exists in the film but not in the same order as is seen in the game, and refers to when Rose leaves to find living Alessa and Christabella returns the necklace Rose dropped on the ground, since Christabella plays the role Dahlia did in the game.
Harry enters the school area and has to solve a puzzle in order to enter the clock tower.
- It's there but part rewritten. Here Rose actually has to look for keys, and she essentially acquires an area map too. Just like in the game, she explores the school area but the area is limited mostly the backyard and the girl's bathroom.
Harry enters the clock tower to realize that he walked out from it after leaving, thus ensuing the change to Otherworld.
- Rose has to solve a puzzle including the corpse of the Janitor in one of the bathroom stalls, which pays homage to the bathroom scenes that began in Silent Hill 2. While she doesn't remove an item from inside the toilet, she does remove an object stuck into the Janitor's mouth. Solving the puzzle ensues the change to Otherworld.
I agree that removing the piano puzzle and so on was a good choice to make. They are too long and time-consuming and would again just be awkward to watch on screen. The men chasing rose using a bird in a birdcage is also a homage to the room with the empty birdcage which contains a key, so while Chris didn't put the room into the actual film, he did refer to it.
Harry explores the Otherworld school and defeats the first boss inside the school's boiler room. Alessa appears and Harry is brought back to Fog World after leaving the boss room.
- While fleeing the Janitor, Rose is chased by more and more monsters which is probably paying homage to the hard difficulty level which has more monsters in Otherworld. Rose experiences a mental breakdown and is ready to give up, but Cybil saves her in a similar manner like how Alessa appeared in front of Harry, perhaps. She drags Rose into what could be seen as some kind of elevator shaft room, and the defining feature of the room is in fact the large fan which most likely pays homage to Silent Hill 3.
Another thing I forgot to mention earlier as well was how Gans pays homage to the random corpses hanging on the walls in Otherworld, which has its own specific scene tied together with the scene where Rose first engages the Otherworld. The corpse does seem to be more modelled after the corpses you see hanging on the walls in Silent Hill 4 in particular, though.
Other aesthetic similarities are of course how whenever Silent Hill turns into the Otherworld, there is instant darkness, and the siren sounding which has its own explanation in the film. The snow is also now interpreted as ash. I assume this is because it would be seen as strange for Rose to run around in snow considering how she's dressed. Not even Harry is that particularly well-dressed for a colder environment in the game. Furthermore, it is possible to explain some aesthetic aspects of the Otherworld by attributing it to Silent Hill previously being a coal mining town.
Harry leaves the school area and takes off to the mall.
- After Otherworld disappearing, Rose and Cybil head off to Grand Hotel in order to find out if the object Rose found would lead them to more clues as to Sharon's whereabouts. This is pretty much a faithful but somewhat rewritten adaptation of the same plot element.
Harry searches the mall and solves a few puzzles.
-Rose searches Grand Hotel. She encounters Anna together with Cybil. Rose finds more clues where to go next. She solves a puzzle that pays homage to Silent Hill 3.
Harry fights another boss on top of a building.
-Rose has an encounter with Dark Alessa who lures her to the top of the hotel. I also wanted to point out here that Dark Alessa pretty much plays the role Alessa plays in the game, sending out cues and inspiring the protagonist to find her.
After defeating the boss, Fog World returns. Harry sets off to explore the sewers in order to reach the area of the town on the otherside of of the lake.
- Here the plot really starts to deviate and with good reason, as there is no way Gans could have incorporated everything that happened in this part of the game which is quite a bit, especially plot wise. While one could argue that perhaps that should have been more the reason to actually have it in the film, aside the Amusement Park, I doubt that many areas are iconic enough to warrant their presence. There's for example an obvious reason why the school was included, or the hotel, which plays more pivotal roles in later installements such as 2 although under a different name than in the film.
Instead of having Rose explore a sewer area, Rose flees to the church and encounters Christabella for the first time. This scene could part be an inference to when Harry first meets Dahlia though, as both Christabella and Dahlia are speaking in a cryptic manner and direct the protagonist as to where to go next in order to find out more clues.
Harry arrives at the light tower and has an encounter with Cybil again on a boat.
-Rose is still together with Cybil but they are separated as Cybil decides to sacrifice herself in order to let Rose find Alessa. Similarly, Cybil takes off to search the Amusement Park while Harry searches the apartment area, so they are separated. One could perhaps see Cybil's offer to search the Amusement Park as a form of sacrifice. Also, whether people like it or not, the way Cybil and Harry meet and separate in the game is very awkwardly and poorly written. People really overestimate the quality of the original game's plot, especially in terms of dialogue and character development.
Going back a little before Harry leaves for the other side of the town, he also explores the Alcemilla Hospital and has an encounter with Kaufmann and Lisa.
- As we are now nearing the end of the film, Rose has to explore Alcemilla Hospital in Otherworld in order to find Alessa. She acquired a map for this as well, in a way, by memorizing the path where to go.
This scene is a homage to several games, not just the original. In a way it feels like Gans tried to compress the Nowhere area, the Otherworld hospital and the hospital as it appears in later entries of the series into one scene. My only real complaint with this scene is that it feels a little rushed although the scene with the nurses has its own moments. That nurses appear in this area makes sense because it is 1) a homage to Silent Hill 2 where nurses were the most commonly found in the hospital and 2) it's an attempt to refer back to the nurses and doctors in the first game, although they are obviously not as iconic as monsters.
On the other hand, I think perhaps part of the reason why this area is rushed is because Gans wanted to recreate the chaotic feeling of Nowhere. The play Rose does with the flashlight is also a reference to later installments in the series where turning the flash light off will not attract any monsters or few of them.
We are now close to the movie's climax, so obviously there was no way Gans could have included all the puzzles here. It's somewhat of a pity though, since I think a few could have helped to sharpen the atmosphere of the film, by having Rose stay longer in the Otherworld than she did. On the other hand, considering that Rose is unarmed, the question is how she would have dealt with the monsters. I think it would have been very uncharacteristic of Rose to start killing monsters left and right towards the end, and as was noticeable in Revelation, it entirely removed the oppressive feeling of trying to survive. No, I think having Rose being unarmed was a good choice. Instead she has to win thanks to her strong character, not because she can shoot manically with a firearm. It allowed for better character development overall.
After leaving Nowhere, Harry finally engages Dahlia and finds her with Alessa and living Alessa.
- Rose finds living Alessa and Dark Alessa together with Red Nurse who is obviously a reference to Lisa. Another strong deviation occurs here, as Rose leaves Otherworld and enters the church and enagages Christabella. This allows Alessa to enter the church and a final "boss battle" occurs which results in the death of all cultists.
The similarity in both cases is that Dahlia or in the case of the film, the Christabella who represents Dahlia's game role, dies at the hands of Alessa.
A sidenote: I forgot that Cybil died. While the way she died was very different to the way she died in the game, it's still notable that she did die. Considering the deviations Gans has already made to the original plot at this point, one could have argued for that Cybil did not have to die. That Gans chose to let Cybil die strongly suggests how he still tried to be somewhat faithful to the original despite such heavy deviations.
Harry defeats the final boss and the game ends.
- Rose leaves with Sharon who is now merged with Dark Alessa and the movie ends in a way that would suggest more of a bad ending than a good one since after all, Cybil died?
I also agree that it was a good idea to remove Kaufmann from the plot since all other plot elements pertaining his character were removed. And aside helping to determine the ending, I would daresay that Kaufmann is a pretty useless character with no development even though you can find clues about him throughout the game.
Anyway, people will always bitch about the film not being 100% faithful to the game's plot but as is laid out here, it cannot be. I even omitted several things that do not appear in the film at all. I would daresay that for most of the part, Gans focused on the important plot elements though, as well as some iconic places.
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