Review of Silent Hill (2006) by Grayson G — 24 Sep 2016

I'll give this one a three star rating for two reasons. The film was mostly done with practical effects, that includes the fog as they filmed most of this in a small ghost town in Ontario, Canada and it felt like a product of love for the franchise, even if it wasn't that great.

The greatest downfall of this movie was that they introduced Pyramid Head and added suspense into an adaptation of a game that didn't have very much suspense, just a really well done atmosphere and an impressive use of the limitations of the time. The creatures in the game were always avoidable. Pyramid Head, or the Boogeyman, is a representation of the main character's guilt. In this it could be Rose trying to come to terms with the fact that her little girl is gone and blaming herself for the death of her child, therefore having a guilt she has to come to terms with but that's taken away in the second movie, which I'll review later with a much lower rating, As well as the inclusion of the Silent Hill 2 Nurses. In the games the nurses all look different in each game (except homecoming and Origins, those are post movie). The nurses in the first game look pretty normal with the exception of a deformity on their backs, there were also doctors included in the game the look very similar. It's the only game to have them both. In the second game they have cleavage and deformed faces, because James's wife was attractive as well as hospitalized for a couple years before her death. In the third game they all looked like the main character with her natural hair color of black as a form of self loathing. But I'm not here to review the games, just to make a point that they could have designed a new outfit for the nurses in this to co-relate better to Rose's character.

On the topic of Rose, I actually quite liked her as a character. She's a worrying mother yelling out for her daughter out of desperation, this is right after an amazing remake of the opening scene from the first game, where Harry gets out of his car to look for his daughter, while calling out her name. They even have a very accurate adaptation with Rose walking down the alley, having the scenery slowly change in the dark, and being chased by one of the grey children, ending up in a cafe. Having "Ring of FIre" playing in the background as she catches her breath is more of a reference to her love for her child as well as what happened to Alessa. It's a nice bit of audio visual poetry that a lot of people don't seem to notice.

Though there were a lot of missed opportunities in this, instead of having Cybil burnt alive (the actress over a real fire in very real danger if they messed up), they could have had a scene where Rose was forced to kill her to enter the labyrinth, which was an actually place in the games though a lot more reminiscent of the rest of the game. I mean ending it off with Rose needing to use Cybil's gun to shoot down a woman that used to be her daughter would have been a lot more visually appealing than gore. Even having this scene where Rose just stands over the woman, crying and then they fade to black, cuing the credits and the song "Tears of..." from the game starts play. That would have been a much better ending.

All in all, Christoph Gans put a solid effort into adapting a game that he loved and it does show, which is why I'll give it a recommendation to fans of the game, just not die hard fans.