Silent Hill (Movie) Review
Two posts in one week? Hmm, no wonder it's been so cold down here lately. Like I said last time, I had to get this one out quickly before I finished repressing the memories of watching the film, I am a bit ahead of schedule. Hope y'all don't mind.
Been living the demo life these past few days, playing the demos for Heroes of Might and Magic V and Titan Quest. Titan Quest is better than I thought it'd be, which is interesting, because I thought it would rock hard. Think Dungeon Siege with everything that was wrong with it turned into pure greatness. Plus it has an Asian setting now, so I'm actually salivating thinking about it. Yes, I am a loser, thank you for pointing that out. As for Heroes, it's been close on a decade since I last played an HoMM game, so I can't say whether or not it's a huge improvment over it's predecessors, but it a good game when taken on it's own.
In non-game related news, I've been listening to the Kashimashi character image singles, which are pretty good, but awfully depressing. This is more because of my frustration over how that series turned out than any quality of the songs, though. Other music in my playlist has included Melocure's debut -- and regrettably only, since one of the singers passed away not long after the album was released -- album, Melodic Hard Cure. It's an interesting mix of sugary pop and wall-of-sound maximalism. I rather like it.
On to this entry's review: Silent Hill the movie. Not to be confused with Silent Hill the games, or indeed anything vaguely resembling a good movie. And if that seems a tad harsh; baby, I'm only getting started.
Silent Hill the movie is about a long, painful decent into Hell. Whether this journey is supposed to be made by the protagonists or the audience, however, is never really resolved. Hopefully the sequel will clear that up. Okay, joking aside, Silent Hill is a bad movie. It would even be a bad movie for a movie based on a video game, but unfortunately Doom the movie caem out recently and totally screwed that scale up. That's not to say that Silent Hill doesn't have it's good points, it's just that these enjoyable elements constitute a little Toy Poodle against the Rotweiler of suckiness that is the rest of the movie.
The best part about this movie, and the only part that was in any way enjoyable, would have to be the soundtrack. However, since every track played in the movie is either a re-mix or a re-arrangement of a track from one of the games, I can't count this as a great achievement. Still, the music is good, though possibly a little out of place at times. Some of the tracks seem a little too... cheerful for a 'getting chased by horrific monsters from your darkest nightmares' scene. The only other major positive I can think of for this movie would be that, as my Father noted when we exited the theater, it does remain somewhat faithful to the feel of the games, in a "will you take the envelope from the box: yes/no" sort of way.
Okay, good stuff out of the way, now for the bad stuff. Hope you brought a lunch. The first thing that will hit you, about 30 seconds into the movie, is that the acting is painful.I mean that literally; towards the end I was actually flinching at each woodenly delivered line. That's not to say that every actor was terrible. Boromir, The Borg Queen, and the Samara knock-off/little girl's pissed offed-ness/demon-thing all did pretty good jobs, downright amazing jobs when you compare them with the rest of the cast.
The next element of the movie I found to be rather poorly executed is one that most other reviewers seem to be lauding: the visuals. Maybe I've been talking with Jarataur too much, but I found the CG in this film to be rather irritating, particularly during the pans across the city and the Otherworld transition sequences. It's not that they were neccesarily bad, it's just that the games did them much better. And that's just it; when a clunkly five year old graphics chip can put out better effects that a modern bleeding-edge supercomputer can render, there is a bit of a problem. And for a horror movie, especially one based off of one of the scariest games of all time, there really weren't any scary moments. This is primarily due to the camera, which set up everything so far in advance that when the creature finally does jump out of the shadows we aren't surprised because we've been getting to know it for the last ten minutes.
Finally we come to what I will rather generously refer to as the plot. My returning readers may have noted that I don't usually talk about the plot of a work -- party because of philosophical reasons and party because I never feel like I can really describe it properly -- but this time I do have somthing I must say. Tycho, over at Penny Arcade got it right: This is not a movie based off of a game. It is a movie based off of how the average non-gamer thinks about games. That is, pretty to look at(well, in a manner of speaking) lots of violence, and a decent amount of shock moments (even if they weren't very good), but an incoherant-at-best plot and overall poor storytelling. I would implore any non-gamer reading this to understand that this is not the case for all video games. There are some games that fall into that category, sure, but then there are some, of which the Silent Hill games are examples, that match any other medium you care to name in terms of story and storytelling.
My final verdict: Don't bother. If you have some strange desire to watch a very bad movie based on a very good game there are several options availible to you in a format that allows to peruse them from the comfort of your own home. This one gets a five out of eleven, placing it somewhere above He Who Must Not Be Named's The Village and somewhere below Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space in terms of entertainment value.
Been living the demo life these past few days, playing the demos for Heroes of Might and Magic V and Titan Quest. Titan Quest is better than I thought it'd be, which is interesting, because I thought it would rock hard. Think Dungeon Siege with everything that was wrong with it turned into pure greatness. Plus it has an Asian setting now, so I'm actually salivating thinking about it. Yes, I am a loser, thank you for pointing that out. As for Heroes, it's been close on a decade since I last played an HoMM game, so I can't say whether or not it's a huge improvment over it's predecessors, but it a good game when taken on it's own.
In non-game related news, I've been listening to the Kashimashi character image singles, which are pretty good, but awfully depressing. This is more because of my frustration over how that series turned out than any quality of the songs, though. Other music in my playlist has included Melocure's debut -- and regrettably only, since one of the singers passed away not long after the album was released -- album, Melodic Hard Cure. It's an interesting mix of sugary pop and wall-of-sound maximalism. I rather like it.
On to this entry's review: Silent Hill the movie. Not to be confused with Silent Hill the games, or indeed anything vaguely resembling a good movie. And if that seems a tad harsh; baby, I'm only getting started.
Silent Hill the movie is about a long, painful decent into Hell. Whether this journey is supposed to be made by the protagonists or the audience, however, is never really resolved. Hopefully the sequel will clear that up. Okay, joking aside, Silent Hill is a bad movie. It would even be a bad movie for a movie based on a video game, but unfortunately Doom the movie caem out recently and totally screwed that scale up. That's not to say that Silent Hill doesn't have it's good points, it's just that these enjoyable elements constitute a little Toy Poodle against the Rotweiler of suckiness that is the rest of the movie.
The best part about this movie, and the only part that was in any way enjoyable, would have to be the soundtrack. However, since every track played in the movie is either a re-mix or a re-arrangement of a track from one of the games, I can't count this as a great achievement. Still, the music is good, though possibly a little out of place at times. Some of the tracks seem a little too... cheerful for a 'getting chased by horrific monsters from your darkest nightmares' scene. The only other major positive I can think of for this movie would be that, as my Father noted when we exited the theater, it does remain somewhat faithful to the feel of the games, in a "will you take the envelope from the box: yes/no" sort of way.
Okay, good stuff out of the way, now for the bad stuff. Hope you brought a lunch. The first thing that will hit you, about 30 seconds into the movie, is that the acting is painful.I mean that literally; towards the end I was actually flinching at each woodenly delivered line. That's not to say that every actor was terrible. Boromir, The Borg Queen, and the Samara knock-off/little girl's pissed offed-ness/demon-thing all did pretty good jobs, downright amazing jobs when you compare them with the rest of the cast.
The next element of the movie I found to be rather poorly executed is one that most other reviewers seem to be lauding: the visuals. Maybe I've been talking with Jarataur too much, but I found the CG in this film to be rather irritating, particularly during the pans across the city and the Otherworld transition sequences. It's not that they were neccesarily bad, it's just that the games did them much better. And that's just it; when a clunkly five year old graphics chip can put out better effects that a modern bleeding-edge supercomputer can render, there is a bit of a problem. And for a horror movie, especially one based off of one of the scariest games of all time, there really weren't any scary moments. This is primarily due to the camera, which set up everything so far in advance that when the creature finally does jump out of the shadows we aren't surprised because we've been getting to know it for the last ten minutes.
Finally we come to what I will rather generously refer to as the plot. My returning readers may have noted that I don't usually talk about the plot of a work -- party because of philosophical reasons and party because I never feel like I can really describe it properly -- but this time I do have somthing I must say. Tycho, over at Penny Arcade got it right: This is not a movie based off of a game. It is a movie based off of how the average non-gamer thinks about games. That is, pretty to look at(well, in a manner of speaking) lots of violence, and a decent amount of shock moments (even if they weren't very good), but an incoherant-at-best plot and overall poor storytelling. I would implore any non-gamer reading this to understand that this is not the case for all video games. There are some games that fall into that category, sure, but then there are some, of which the Silent Hill games are examples, that match any other medium you care to name in terms of story and storytelling.
My final verdict: Don't bother. If you have some strange desire to watch a very bad movie based on a very good game there are several options availible to you in a format that allows to peruse them from the comfort of your own home. This one gets a five out of eleven, placing it somewhere above He Who Must Not Be Named's The Village and somewhere below Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space in terms of entertainment value.
Final Score:
5/11
5/11
For those of you paying attention, no, I do not think that BloodRayne was a good game. I just ran out of titles for my little sequence. Anyhow, next week (heh) we will be moving back east with a review of the Negima manga by Akamatsu. 'Till then.
posted by Mr. the Tiger at 11:45
1 Comments:
It's scary how far ahead the gaming industry has progressed past most of the bleeding edge effects.
I always looked at really good special effects being so subtle that you don't really even notice them or that they seem so real as to not be doubted as reality in the movie. Now there seems more sound than substance anymore.
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