Silent Hill was (yet another) awful video-game based movie (they all are). Slowly, certain friends of mine who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent (and the paint on my car from getting keyed) who are HUGE Silent Hill game fans and claimed to like the movie… have been coming around recently to admitting the horrible truth. Silent Hill (the movie) sucked.
The movie was also a disappointment at the box office, failing to break even with its domestic box office (It made under $50 million) and getting a general thumbs down from the audience. Surprisingly, there have been whispers over the past few months about a possible Silent Hill 2 movie. But the longer those rumors float out there… the more holes pet pricked in its optimistic balloon. Our friends over at MoviesOnline give us the following:
Writer Roger Avary, who wrote and directed “Killing Zoe” and “Rules of Attraction,” is not going back to the visually-haunting but ultimately-disappointing grounds of video game coal town horror for “Silent Hill 2,” the sequel to last year’s adaption from the popular video game “Silent Hill.”
Avary, who wrote the first movie, has probably picked up on this as he is following the lead of director Christophe Gans who said he will not be part of the revisiting of the movie end of the “Silent Hill” franchise, which enjoys its best success in its original video game format. Avary was quoted in a report by ShockTillYouDrop: “I’m not gonna do ‘Silent Hill 2’ … If Christophe’s not gonna do it, I’m not…”
Considering how bad the first movie was… how it didn’t meet box office expectations… and how the audience have generally reacted to it, I’m not surprised that either the director nor the writer want to come anywhere near this thing again. Nor should the studios. Chin up. It was worth a shot (I guess) and you gave it your best. You failed… now walk away, take the learning experience and move on to something else to try.
Ive never played the game, but enjoyed the movie. After reading some of the comments here I’m wondering about all this stuff that I missed out on by not having played the game. Its been a while since I’ve seen but I thought there was some pretty cool and creepy imagery that would have scared me as a kid. I was looking forward to a second installment.
I enjoyed the movie and haven’t played the game. So for on this board I’ve seen only positive comments. What’s the problem?
i liked the first one.
the lady cop was hot, someone got their skin ripped off and a bunch of people got cut up by barbed wire.
i thought it was kind of awesome.
Will considering how Silent Hill the Film Ended (Which I didnt quite get btw) I think it needs a sequel. Personally I loved the film I thought it was a close adapation of the game even tho I havent played the game. If the Resident Evil Film was more like this it couldve kicked ass. I mean if Resident Evil was in the mansion that wouldve been awesome but o well.
I think john might have had a preconceived idea that the film was gonna be bad so of course he thought it was bad.
I mean its got a 6.5 on IMDB so some people have got to be liking it right???
At one point in Silent Hill Pyramid Head tears a girls skin off and hurls it at a church. Need I say more?
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!
@ Chrisp
“I haven’t met anyone who’s not into Silent Hill and still liked the movie.”
I have never played Silent Hill, I have never watched anyone play Silent Hill….but i still enjoyed this film, it wasnt great or anything but i liked it enough to
I actually enjoyed the first Silent Hill…and i wouldnt mind seeing a second one, probably wouldnt go see it in theaters but i would probably buy it…
To Darren:
Hey, aside from my dad, I haven’t met anyone who’s not into Silent Hill and still liked the movie. Not to state that it’s impossible, but you have to admit that it seems pretty rare. I also was looking forward to this film based on the fact that I loved Brotherhood of the Wolf. I still walked out of the theatre conflicted because I thought it was pretty cool, but I can also spot so many missed opportunities and weaknesses. In the end, I understood that it was my love for the series that guided me past the flaws.
I watched several interviews with the director and he stated multiple times that it was a film for the fans and it contained a lot of winks to the fans. It really did contained a lot of winks, including the 80’s Konami cheat code (“Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right…”). However, I can’t see how the majority of the film going audience can catch any of it. The Pyramid Head character was kick-ass, but who was he in the movie? I would have no idea if I didn’t know his character from the game. The monsters in the game are supposed to be based on each protagonist’s mind states, which kind of helps tell us more about the main character. How does that communicate in the film?
Anyway, I’m not against you liking it and in fact, I wish more people could have liked it. I’m just stating my point of view that it was a very flawed movie. Actually, I think it was even more painful, because there were some great moments, next to the really crap moments that makes you see the amount of potential that it had. I don’t think the filmmakers did their best as filmmakers. They did their best to serve the fans too much.
What can i say…. i loved silent hill! :D thought it was an excellent film, i wudnt say its a guilty pleasure cause im not guilty about loving it ^^
” It was made for Silent Hill fans (which I am) and only fans can like it because we can fill in a lot of holes. ”
While my thoughts can be noted over in the community, (and once again…oh, never mind…) I’ll say this Chrsip.
That’s a crock.
I was not a Silent Hill fan. Never played the game. I went to see it only on the strength of the director, Christophe Gans, whose Le Pact Des Loups (Brotherhood Of The Wolf) I absoultely enjoyed.
But I was annoyed by some of Hill’s sillyness, apprciated John Carpenter’s “In The Mouth Of Madness’ a little bit more…and, finally, I got sick and tired how people telling me how I can’t possibly like the film if I never played the game. I’m convinced now that Avery and Gans did what they could, did the best they could…but on reflection, wisely conclude that there are better projects out there than an uneeded sequel…
To make a film soely “for the fans” is a lame duck approach. I’ve heard that claim before, and with every film made “for the fans” winds up being a pile of crap. The idea is not only to please the fans, but find a new audience as well- either for the film or the source material it is adapted from, or both.
I think it could have more potential if they:
a)keep the diretor
b) add a great editor
c) find a GOOD writer
Honestly, the writing sucked. It was made for Silent Hill fans (which I am) and only fans can like it because we can fill in a lot of holes. As a standalone film, it was terrible due to poor dialogue and major plot holes. I had to sit and explain so much of the missing content to my friends and fiancee, just so they would understand the mythology of Silent Hill. Afterwards, they thought the film was cool because they got all of it.
The Silent Hill series is known for its great and rich story, so there really was no excuse for such a lacking script.
I actually thought this movie was good. The actress playing it did well. But then it got past the hour mark and shifted into the ‘boring and over the top’ line.
The sequences where she is alone in the misty abandoned town are very unsettling and creepy. I also found the strange little monster things to be pretty nasty. But as soon as these sequences ended and it degenerated badly.
To tell you the truth, I really enjoyed the movie, minus the last twenty minutes. I am not going to say that the entire movie sucked based on that final expose, but I was really enjoying it right up until then. I loved the creature design, and the entire mood was strange and wonderful. It’s a guilty pleasure I know, but I can’t help what I like (not love).