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Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Slient Hill Screams for Return
Silent Hill Relevations opens October 26th.
In 1999, survival horror video games were dominated by one title- Resident Evil. That was until Konami developed a game that was called "a shameless, but slick Resident Evil clone" by Gamepro. It was about a father who gets into a car accident with his daughter in a remote town called Silent Hill. When he awoke, the girl was gone and he has to look for her. Though exploring the town, the father (known as Harry Mason) finds out the true origins of his daughter (Cheryl). In 2006, Silent Hill was released, but transformed it's main character from a father to a mother and changed the name of Cheryl to Sharon. The film is one of the more underrated of the video game movies, but audiences and critics could not say the same with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 29%. However, hardcore fans applauded the film for staying somewhat true to the series though it combined elements of the first three games. If director Christophe Gans didn't incorporate aspect of the other games, audiences wouldn't have been introduced to Pyramid Head, who is one of the more frightening monsters in video game history.
Malcolm McDowell joins Adelaide Clemens on the tour of the haunted town.
The first film did not go the way of the more popular Resident Evil and did relied more on it's story than creating new characters and action sequences that made little sense. It was a cross between Carrie and the Salem Witch Trials with an ending that didn't seem to fulfill audiences viewing pleasure. Now Silent Hill has spawned a sequel Silent Hill Relevations and it's premise attempts to keep to the story from the Silent Hill games. Heather (Adelaide Clemens) is haunted by nightmares on the eve of her 18th birthday. After the disappearance of her father Christopher (Sean Bean), she travels to the "alternate" Silent Hill and encounters all the monsters left out of the first Silent Hill film that were left out. According to IMDb, Radha Mitchell (the lead of the first film) is credited as Heather encounters "her mother". Where the story goes is a mystery? Do they follow the Resident Evil path and introduce monsters seemingly without rhyme or reason only to sacrifice the story? Will 3D be enough to keep the mind-fuck the first film was?
What is certain is that Pyramid Head will make another appearance? Considered one of the greatest monsters in the gaming history, Pyramid Head had two appearances in the first Silent Hill film. The second scene was the most disturbing, gory and downright filthy. It featured Pyramid Head peeling off the skin of a girl and throwing it against a church wall. A terrifying character that began appearing in the second Silent Hill game, it would behoove the filmmaker (Michael J. Bassett) to feature him. Below is the Pyramid Head scene in the first film and I'm sure you'll agree. How Silent Hill will be received by audiences will be a mystery, but it will get it's chance to follow up on Resident Evil once again. Unlike ten years ago, Resident Evil has lowered the bar so low that if the film had 30 minutes of commercials in the middle of it, it should beat out Resident Evil. If it doesn't Silent Hill will never speak again.
Yeah, but it doesn't COUNT if the Silent Hill story didn't make sense to BEGIN with, and it didn't. The game was full of elements that COULD have been better with a more coherent story--the flashlight having the capability to die, the static that announced when an enemy was close, the second death of Lisa Garland (easily, for me, the creepiest moment in the entire game and the only one where I felt the director wasn't phoning it in) and a simple "insane cult does shitty things to ruin a town" concept--but instead they overcomplicated it impossibly with the "alternate" Silent Hill (never explained, simply there for "creepy dark locale" scare factor, which was already covered by "abandoned snowy town"). The diversions in which you could save Kaufmann or Cybill were clever, but if you didn't do it correctly, the story stopped making sense at about the 65% mark. So what we have here is basically "town inexplicably full of demons years after crazy lady tries to 'Rosemary's Baby' her daughter" plotline, and then it just looks like the game developers were like, "Scary masks still make money, right? Ah, let's put a pyramid on the guy's head."
Sure, I'm biased towards the Resident Evil series, but I've said from the beginning that Silent Hill dropped the baton when it came to getting tangled up in their own storyline. I'll still take that one minute where the Licker crawls across the ceiling in the Raccoon City Police station for "oh holy shit no" scare factor.
Yeah, but it doesn't COUNT if the Silent Hill story didn't make sense to BEGIN with, and it didn't. The game was full of elements that COULD have been better with a more coherent story--the flashlight having the capability to die, the static that announced when an enemy was close, the second death of Lisa Garland (easily, for me, the creepiest moment in the entire game and the only one where I felt the director wasn't phoning it in) and a simple "insane cult does shitty things to ruin a town" concept--but instead they overcomplicated it impossibly with the "alternate" Silent Hill (never explained, simply there for "creepy dark locale" scare factor, which was already covered by "abandoned snowy town"). The diversions in which you could save Kaufmann or Cybill were clever, but if you didn't do it correctly, the story stopped making sense at about the 65% mark. So what we have here is basically "town inexplicably full of demons years after crazy lady tries to 'Rosemary's Baby' her daughter" plotline, and then it just looks like the game developers were like, "Scary masks still make money, right? Ah, let's put a pyramid on the guy's head."
ReplyDeleteSure, I'm biased towards the Resident Evil series, but I've said from the beginning that Silent Hill dropped the baton when it came to getting tangled up in their own storyline. I'll still take that one minute where the Licker crawls across the ceiling in the Raccoon City Police station for "oh holy shit no" scare factor.