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My honest thoughts after my first ever viewing

posted 8 years ago by thewallofsleep
9 replies | jump to latest

I just watched this for the first time tonight. I avoided it previously because it's a video game adaptation...

The art direction, set design, makeup effects, etc. are great. No flaws there.

The music is great, probably because most of it is directly from the earlier games in the series.

Now the CGI, that's another story. It passable for 2006 standards I suppose, but sometimes it's too obvious, and it took me out of the experience. The bugs come to mind, as does something else I'll discuss in a moment.

The Cybill character is a bit much. I just didn't buy it. It works in a video game, especially a late 90's Japanese survival horror game, but not do much in a serious horror film. Minor gripe.

The performance of Dahlia was really over the top and unconvincing. It was funny how she is dressed in rags like a beggar, but had make up on and even appeared to have painted her toenails!

Apart from some jarring CGI moments, I was enjoying and getting invested in the movie...then the religious fanatic cult with the "safe zone" church reveals itself. After that point, it was all downhill. I'd been fine it it being a bit too deviated from the games story if it hadn't been such a huge part of the second half of the movie, or if everyone had over acted so terribly. Seriously, it was laugh inducing. More on that shortly.

Seeing the nurses and pyramid head was very cool. Them not being CGI made their scenes great. It doesn't make a lot of sense including them, since the movie seems to be based mostly on SH1, but whatever. They never even attempt to suggest that the monsters are manifestations of ones guilt, rage, fears, etc. so I guess it doesn't really matter...

The ending scene at the church is hilarious. All the CGI barbed wire and Alessa on the bed. Yikes. Her make up looked pretty awful. The movie got very close to Resident Evil movie level awful goofy schlock at this point with everyone getting comically splattered and I was laughing quite a bit.

So yeah, this movie isn't terrible, and the visual effects and music are great. It just falls apart in the second half, in my opinion. The end "action" scene or whatever is what kills it though. Many horror films fail when it comes to an effective ending, and this film is no exception.

5/10 for the visuals and music alone.

[–] JKristine35 8 years ago

All of the monsters are manifestations of Alessa's memories and emotions.

It is the way of men to make monsters; and it is the nature of monsters to destroy their makers.

[–] thewallofsleep 8 years ago

I get that. It therefore doesn't make sense for James Sunderland's monsters to be present. It's a minor complaint though, as the scenes with Pyramid Head and the nurses are great fun.

[–] JKristine35 8 years ago

It's a different canon than the games, one in which James does not exist. The nurses and PH in the film were given different meanings than those seen in the games. In particular, PH's design was specifically altered to show that this version of him was being manifested by the mind of a female character.

It is the way of men to make monsters; and it is the nature of monsters to destroy their makers.

[–] tbonesays 8 years ago

Basically I agree with all of your opening lines and liked the effects. SH was the first CGI movie I saw that actually looked good. [unless I saw some others without knowing it lol]

Not sure I get why Dahlia was over the top. She's supposed to be the mad woman in the attic. I can even accept that she still keeps electric appliances in her room.

Agree that the church scene was bad on so many levels. But afterward I thought the trip home was A+.

[–] Moviemanic22 8 years ago

I din't like it much the first time I saw it. Fell asleep at the 50 minute point and woke up again at the church scene.

[–] seth-shaw23 8 years ago

The CGI was bad but I can forgive older films with poor effects. This movie was just downright confusing to me. I really didn't clearly understand it at all until reading summaries of it online. I played the games years ago as a younger person but didn't remember the story at all. This had a chance to be creepy but was just too all over the place for me. I almost would have preferred a more straight forward story with Pyramid Head as a slasher villain.

[–] tbonesays 8 years ago

Well the sequel doesn't quite go all in with horny teens go camping in Silent Hill, but it should be more to your liking though the CGI is much cheaper.

[–] tueher86 7 years ago

Pyramid Head as a Slasher villain? Oh god...no.

The Silent Hill games made their mark because of their deep psychological meanings. This is what set the series apart from all other similar games.

If the movie had chose to sell out and be a typical slasher film, the creators of the game would have never agreed to give them the license.

[–] SomeDesperado 8 years ago

I don't agree about Cybil or Dahlia. I think Laurie Holden really sells it and as someone has already pointed out Dahlia was supposed to be insane, her appearances in the movie came off as very haunting and off-kilter to me.

I haven't played the game so I didn't have any problems with the deviations in storyline. I like the thought of the townspeople creating their own monster and it fits the whole "mother" theme running through the film. Christabella is a mother to her flock, a mother leading her children astray. We see them acting very child-like (fearful, temperamental, desperate for approval), without Christabella to guide them through this nightmare they're lost. Which is funny since she's the one who got them there in the first place. She's basically the abusive mother who never lets her kids grow up. Btw, I thought Alice Krige gave quite a good performance.

I can see where you're coming from when it comes to the CGI though. I think it holds up for the most part but at times it isn't very believable. The CGI in the church scene didn't look too bad to me, barbwire really isn't hard to pull off. I can understand someone not liking that scene because of the over-the-top nature of it but if I were Alessa that's exactly what I'd do. There's something so wonderfully cathartic about violence (see Fight Club) and seeing as Alessa had a lot of issues to work through only something like that would suffice. I understand that it's not for everyone though and I also recognize that the climax could probably have been done better.