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Originally Posted by LeHah

Which is the correct way to look at things. People that say Ebert "just doesn't get it" are people who don't understand film in the slightest.

So... thinking is bad?

I'm reading what you wrote, and that seems to be the overlying point. It seems your claiming if the movie won't spell it out for the general public, then it's not a good movie. What are you getting at?

It sounds like you gear yourself toward pop-culture, spoon fed, movies... which always leave me feeling I didn't get my money worth.

I'm actually fairly conscerned that the movie might suck tonight. However, any reviewer who resolves to "I won't think through this/I won't try to think through this", deserves no credibility in that review.

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Originally Posted by SketchTheArtist

He gets credit for all the pieces at the end. Stay through the whole credits.

Didn't you read what I posted?

I know, he gets credit for the individual songs. All the way at the end.

Also, I was the only person left in the theater during the second credits. At least some people (like, 5 people) stayed for the first group of credits. This is out of a crowd of 30+ people.

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People that say Ebert "just doesn't get it" are people who don't understand film in the slightest.

Now, see, I've read various thoughts and articles from the two people directly responsible for this film, Gans and Avery. To suggest that they don't have some idea of what they're doing, I'd say the same of those people. This hasn't really been a basic movie making experience from an onlooker's perspective. The film makers have really let people in to their mindsets, they've communicated with fans, needed approval from Konami and Yamaoka, and with everything that's shone from the spirit of the film makers in regards to making this film, you'd think that anyone panning the film would have something, anything to say about that.

How could something go so wrong from two seemingly intelligent and passionate people who have been so genuinely excited about what they've made? It doesn't add up. Taking that into account, reasons for calling the film awful better be damn good, unlike any of the superficial piss poor reasoning I've seen so far.

If the movie is bad, I'll agree that it's bad after I see it tomorrow. Judging from early opinions, the lines aren't very difficult to read between.

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Originally Posted by a_jazzman

Oopsie! Yeah, Jeff Dana was the one who 'created' the musical cues and arranged the already completed pieces, hence he got that credit.

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Originally Posted by LeHah

Don't get what you're trying to say here. Roger Ebert has understood difficult movies in the past so he's infallible when he says he doesn't understand something, or Roger Ebert has understood many difficult movies in the past so he should have made sense of Silent Hill, unless he simply didn't care to because he expected to hate the movie?

Now I wished I sat through the entire credits <_<,

personally I felt that this was the best video game adaptation-ish movie I have seen overall. This wasn't really a scary movie though, but I guess that wasn't really the point of the movie (i.e Grudge was merely there to scare people by "surprises"). This movie excerted more of a sense of uncomfortablenss due to the atmospheric feel of the setting. BEAUTIFUL setting, if I say so myself. I have to agree though there was a bit of fanservice in the movie in which people may question its significance like the red nurse. I guess my only complaints would be some of the lines and...like the other fans...pyramid head's brief scenes.

This is a nice movie overall, not the best movie of the decade, but I give it ian 8.5/10

I just got back from watching it. Allow me to offer my thoughts. Keep in mind this is in no way the definitive final word with the film. Just understand that it's coming from someone who is a huge fan of the series, a huge fan of the horror genre, but also someone who can look at the movie without any sort of bias. I'll try to keep things as brief as I can. There will be marked spoilers throughout the review.

As a fan of the series, this movie was excellent. The production values and visual style was utterly amazing. I'm truly amazed how well they handled SH1's opening act, which was handled with absolute perfection and editing. A PS3 remake couldn't do a better job. I could go on for several paragraphs more over how well the movie succeeds visually, but it really is something you must experience for yourself.

I'm just going to get right to the negatives. Basically, most of the dialogue was convulted noise. Filler material at best. I think to way back when Motsy made the claim that Advent Children would work better as a silent film. That idea would've actually worked here. From the fans' point of view, it feels like a director's attempt at fanfiction, paraphrasing what the series' veterans already know. For the general movie watcher, the dialogue will either be confusing or laughable.

And that, unfortunately, is where the movie's greatest weakness lies; the final half. Once the movie decided to move away from the monsters and focus on the human cult, things took a small dive. This combined with the previous statement that the director tried a little too hard remaining faithful to the game. You simply can't explain SH1's plotline in the span of 10 minutes and expect people to get it. I could totally feel the collective brains of the theater room frying like eggs.

The fans don't fare any better, as they, like me, will complain about the alterations to the story. Seriously, what was the point of

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It's also inaccurate that

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The second complaint I have is with the soundtrack. As fanboyishly giddy as I was when they started using the original music (with some additional or altered instruments that would classify the music as "remixed"), it became a bit repetitive as they kept reusing the same songs over and over. And as I feared, some songs just didn't work when they were taken out of context. The inclusion of a fast-beat song as Rose and Cybil were walking made things appear cheesier than they should be. As I said before, I would've much rather had an original soundtrack composed by Yamaoka. Or at least use more of the darker, noise-driven music from the first game. SH2's OST pretty much gets used the most, with SH3 a close second.

And finally, as much as I enjoyed the purely R rated violence (especially the infamous scene with Pyramid Head that everyone should know about by now. It's far worse then anyone could describe), I felt the gore got a little overboard, especially during the climax. SH has always been a bloody series, but I always felt that it managed to hold enough back that it wouldn't be excessive. Not the case in this movie, which almost borders on exploitation, especially a certain death that's going to seem all too familiar with anyone who's knowledgable with any anime involving tentacles.

The ultraviolence also bothered me in regards to

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Finally, I wish they kept Harry in instead of Rose, as I doubt too many guys will take her seriously. Her love for Sharron, while genuine, may be seen as a bit excessive, practically stripping her sense of logic. The first 10 minutes will be proof enough of this claim. And one scene in particular just made me want to cry out bullshit (SH was never a platformer, okay). I get that they wanted the audience to feel more compassion toward a woman, but I felt that it would've been more effective to have a male character break down and shit himself with all that goes on in the town. There honestly isn't a male on the planet who wouldn't be creeped out in a situation like this.

So in the end, I felt that the final half should've taken a different direction and just focus on the survival aspect, introducing more monsters to have our heroine escape, screaming her brains out (which was very well done, by the way, echoing the kind of screams you'd hear from the original Chansaw Massacre). I also feel that Gans might have been more effective crafting an original story, instead of trying to digest (and ultimately screw with) the first game's plotline. This made the movie drag on more than it should have (a shorter running time would've actually been favorable), as well as feeling far too videogamey in other aspects (how did she even know to look in the school?).

This may sound like a lot of complaints, but in the eyes of a fan, all these things are irrelavent. I guarantee 90% of the SH fanbase will enjoy this movie immensly. Anyone not knowledgable with the series, though, might be harder to convince. Gore hounds will love the violence here, taken far more seriously than any horror movie in recent years, but casual moviegoers might dismiss the convulted plot. And teenagers have plenty of material that they can laugh at, as the movie does have quite a bit of unintentionally funny moments (not counting the monsters, in which it's okay to laugh. I certainly did, but not because they were cheesy, more like "holy shit!").

So in short....

Talking=bad.

Monsters=good!

I'll spell it out even further; Silent Hill, like Advent Children, is fanservice, perhaps even in a purer sense. You like the games? You'll like this, no question. Don't like it or know anything about it? See it anyway, and treat it like a haunted house ride. You'll enjoy the creepy visuals and awesome monsters. There's nothing else like it currently.

Bring on the sequel. Bring on Silent Hill 2: The Room.

Note: Don't worry, my impressions on AC won't be nearly as long. I swear it'll only take up a paragraph, if even that.

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Also, I was the only person left in the theater during the second credits. At least some people (like, 5 people) stayed for the first group of credits. This is out of a crowd of 30+ people.

I stayed until the first set of credits finished. Left when the second set started. If there was an extra image or scene shown afterwards, I didn't see it.

Also, I aggree with Sprout's claims that the movie needed more Pyramid Head. The final act should've been him and his roaches going on a murder spree instead of the last "boss" they created for this movie.

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Originally Posted by a_nal

how did she even know to look in the school?

The picture Sharon had drawn that she picked up. It showed Sharon in the school with 'monsters'.

Anyways, as a casual observer who has little experience of the games beyond a five minute play around a mates house once years ago, I can say I honestly enjoyed the film. The cult stuff did get a bit cheesy towards the end, and I was kind of hoping pyramid head would return, but all in all I liked it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by a_nal

Also, I aggree with Sprout's claims that the movie needed more Pyramid Head. The final act should've been him and his roaches going on a murder spree instead of the last "boss" they created for this movie.

That is EXACTLY what I was hoping for. It's what I was expected. And while I didn't mind the...

Spoiler:

...barbed wire rape/massacre...

...seeing Pyramid Head wreck shit would have been much more satisfying.

That was an excellent review and I agree with pretty much everything you said. For SH fans, it's complete fan service and is a treat to watch. Others, not so much.

My guess is that the studio played a hand in the Dhalia switcheroo... If Gans is as big of a fan as he says he is, he would have kept her the way she is. The studios always have problems with really taboo stuff like that.

That's a likely possibility. I suppose they figured that it was an extra layer of dark and depressing in a movie that's already dark and depressing enough.

And yet they have no problem with barbed wire going through that person's....well you know. :/

The more I think about PH, the more I realize what a show stealer he was. They'll definetley use him again if they work on a sequel, but I was hoping to get my fill in this one. :(

Also, I give props to the Janitor creature made for the film. I didn't think he would work, having a more human appearance than the other creatures, but he was one of the best moments in this film. It was especially creepy when

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just saw the movie today (yes early) . I thought it was alright. It needed a more Pyramid Head appearances but i was still happy for the movie.

Few things though..

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Originally Posted by chato

just saw the movie today (yes early) . I thought it was alright. It needed a more Pyramid Head appearances but i was still happy for the movie.

Few things though..

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I mostly agree with SOLDIER's/a_nal's impressions. I really enjoyed it for the most part, but a lot of the changes to the cult rubbed me the wrong way. Still an overall excellent film, and I can't wait for Gans' take on SH2.

Are the games linked up to each other in anyway?

I believe the movie took a different twist from the game due to the fact that they wanted to follow a different theme in which the changed Dalhia significantly

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Just got back from the movie. Here's the review I wrote up in my journal. Some of my opinions might change when I have more time to digest the movie a bit, but it's a general first impression.

Spoiler:

In general: a lot of really cool monsters, really cool moments, and frequently dead-on pacing and atmosphere, dragged down by too many characters, some unnecessarily over-the-top details, and an unnecessary attempt to re-invent certain plot points of the series that really, really don't need to be re-invented. Particularly not the way the movie tried to do it.

Also, not enough Pyramid Head. But you can never have enough Pyramid Head.

This is a movie that's really, really good in the details. Just bad in the execution of what goes on in between the details. The setting? Lovely. Wonderful. Silent Hill through and through. As Rose wanders through the town, through the school, through the alleyway, it FEELS like Silent Hill. It really, really does. And those moments are wonderful. The alleyway scene is one of the highlights of the movie, and it does an amazingly good job of combining original ideas with the monsters, the scares, even the camera angles from the game. That one scene is what the whole movie could have -- SHOULD have -- been. If only. But even when the plot was getting ridiculous, the settings and atmosphere were always a treat. Both misty and dark Silent Hill were handled as well as you could hope for or better. Makes me wish the whole movie had just been Rose wandering around. Preferrably alone. The movie goes downhill when people start talking.

The detail in the monsters is amazing. The scene with the patient demon was one of my favourites, everything from how it moved to the acid spray. At that moment I really, really had hope that the movie would keep up to that standard of awesome. It didn't. Though it wasn't without its shining moments. When Pyramid Head saunters onto screen, casual as you please, it's just such an SH2 MOMENT. Even with the unnecessary posse of cockroaches. (Guys, PH is scary enough on his own. He doesn't need bugs following him around.) The Janitor was actually very well done despite being a bit more human-looking than the average SH monster, and I'll give the moviemakers props for making him actually kinda cool. If you can appreciate atmosphere, monster design, and settings, you'll do fine with the movie.

But oh, where to start on the rest...

Among other things, there's just this overwhelming sense of things slipping under the radar. Sharon is dying, apparently, but other than a brief mention at the beginning, you don't hear any more about it. It's sort of Advent Children-ish in that way. Remember how absolutely non-crippling, boring, and underwhelming Geostigma was? Well, that's Sharon. "She'd dying from a horrible disease!" Uh... Yeah. She seems to be getting on perfectly fine, but I guess I'll take your word for it, movie. It can't be that important, considering you never brought it up again after the first five minutes.

Then there's the cultists. Holy fuck did they annoy me. Bad acting aside, I hated them for the same reason I hated one of the stories in the graphic novel: too many people around = NOT SCARY. Or rather, it means they steal the show away from the more personal stories, eat up screentime, and utterly making you lose sight of the presence, threat, and punishing/redemptive nature of the TOWN. Too many people, too much (usually cheesy) dialogue from said people, and every scene with them just had me waiting for Rose to get back to exploring the town. And for a movie that put so much work into the monster prosthetics and set design, it's beyond me why they couldn't come up with character designs that didn't make all the cultists, Dahlia, and evil-Alessa look like hobo bag ladies. It was just silly and embarassing, and made sure I couldn't take any of them seriously.

Speaking of Dahlia... Gah. The way they turned Dahlia into a loving, suffering mommy was annoying, but it was just one part of the stupid changes made to some of the characters and series plot. What they did with the town's kooky religion just doesn't hold a candle to the way it's supposed to be, and the changes made to the religion just plain bothered me. A lot. Since when do the cultists hate witches? Anyone remember Saint Jennifer (I think that was her name)? That witch briefly mentioned in a few of the games, burned by the TOWNSPEOPLE and basically made a saint within the cult? The cultists aren't afraid of the darkness or the evil of the town. They CREATED it. They WANT it. They SUMMONED the demon. What it made of Silent Hill is their "paradise". It might have backfired on them, but the whole thing loses its impact when you ditch basically everything interesting about it and replace it with that bloody witchburning nonsense. They ditched the entire story around Alessa being a vessel for Samael, her mom and the cult burning her, the fact that she's supposed to give birth to their god and create paradise, etc. Now she's basically just a random girl burned alive to "cleanse" her after she was raped, and poor sad mommy Dahlia feels bad about letting it happen.

No. Just...no. Dahlia's a stone-cold bitch and a nasty piece of work all-around (see SH4 for extra reasons why). The cult is kooky, but they're far more interesting in their kookiness than that "OMG WITCHES!!!1" crap. Would it have been so hard to stick with the original plot? Or failing that, to just ditch the cult and Alessa altogether and doing a more original plotline rather than getting rid of most of what made them interesting? Geez. Just have Sharon be connected to a different little Silent Hill girl. The cult ran an orphanage, I can't imagine they didn't horribly torment at least a few other kiddies. Have the cult in the movie be a splinter group or something. I might not have liked them any more, but I could have stomached that more easily. Just don't change things around, cut out everything interesting about the cult and Alessa, and pretend it's the way things happened. It's not. And it's far, far less interesting.

Geez, I promised myself I wouldn't be obsessive and nit-picky about the changes the movie made to the game details. It's a movie. It's not the games, and it can't pretend to be. But a wonderful setting, great monster effects, and a bit of fanservice can't make up for doing something utterly retarded with the very things that make the series' plot interesting, doing it for apparently no reason, and doing it badly.

I don't know what to say about the movie overall, honstly. I applaude it for what it did well. Kudos to them for getting the monsters, setting, and atmosphere so accurate, and for making some parts of it genuinely FEEL like the games. But it seems like the other aspects of the movie had a lot of trouble keeping up with that. The annoying lines, cultists, and plot changes for all the wrong reasons... They should have been minor, incidental gripes in the midst of all the good things the movie had to offer, but they just kept distracting me all the way through. Disappointment.

Though the ending (the VERY end, not so much the scene in the church) was pretty good. Mother and daughter taken over by Silent Hill, and they get their own little "heaven" for their trouble.

My advice: don't treat the movie as a remake of the first game. Treat is as a side-story akin to the graphic novel stories, one that just happens to pull a lot of details from the games. It really feels more like the graphic novels than anything else, in how the story is told. Compare it to those if you must, don't get bogged down comparing it to the first game. That way you'll be more able to enjoy the good aspects of the movie while ignoring some of the stupider ones. The settings, monsters, and atmosphere are all wonderful. It's what's going on in their midst that will have you rolling your eyes and muttering about the VG movies curse.

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Originally Posted by Amanda

-everything said-

QFT.

That's exactly it. That's everything that was right/wrong with the film.

I love the details, it showed that either Gans or Avery wanted to put in a lot of cool stuff that only the fans would appreciate (exploring Brahams, keeping many of the names the same, using the same camera angles for the alleyway scenes). However, I wished they hadn't turned the cult into a cliche, muddled mess.

As you said, if they had dropped the cult story or kept with the original game's plot completely, it would have been perfect.

Still has a lot of great scenes, and if this had been a fan-made movie, it would have been KING.

So I heard this movie's actual plot was hardly like the game? Didn't the game have to do something with giving birth to God? (Something about Cheryl being Daughter of God, Mother of God in Silent Hill 3.)

So what does that do for sequels? Won't the plot just run terribly off course like the Resident Evil series? Also, Pyramid Head's appearance in this movie would make his appearance in a movie adaptation Silent Hill 2 pretty lame.

Frankly, I don't see any need or opening for a sequel.

It would come out of left field if Gans announced one.

If there's any sequel, it should be a standalone title like SH2 was to SH1 (the games). I don't see how the ending was a cliffhanger like so many people are saying. Dumb.

I don't see why you wouldn't want a sequel out of a series that has four (eventually five) games. But okay.

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Originally Posted by a_gerontophile

Spoiler:

The movie ditched the entire "Daughter of God, Mother of God" thing. And the entire thing about Samael being in Alessa's soul (you know, that little detail that the first and third games COMPLETELY REVOLVE AROUND). And just about everything else the games have established about Alessa and the cult's religion, except the fact that Alessa was burned alive and eventually got enough bad mojo going to turn the town evil and take everyone with it.

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So what does that do for sequels? Won't the plot just run terribly off course like the Resident Evil series? Also, Pyramid Head's appearance in this movie would make his appearance in a movie adaptation Silent Hill 2 pretty lame.

At this point, we should probably all hope they don't try to do Silent Hill 2 as a movie. It would look beautiful, but considering the plot details they've made a mess of in this movie, a good adaptation of SH2's plot probably wouldn't be in the cards.

Incidentally, for all the people wondering about the "I am the reaper" line... Yes, it is indeed "reaper." But it actually isn't cheesy in the context in which the movie uses it. There's no voice distortion, and it's just one little snippet of a longer sentence. Just so you know.

About the ending~: