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SILENT HILL
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| Rated R
| | Copyright 2006 Silent Hill DCP Inc.
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Reviewed by Andrew Borntreger on 8 October 2008
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Rose is terrified that what lurks in her adopted daughter's past might harm the child, so she loads the young girl into the family SUV and sets out to find the forgotten town of Silent Hill. What Rose should have done was to enroll the two of them in family counseling. The mother and daughter could have worked out their problems in brightly-lit meetings where everyone else claps after somebody breaks down crying (and then they enjoy tea and biscuits). Instead of enjoying group therapy, Rose finds herself lost in a supernatural wonderland.
However, and I must point this out, this is not "Alice in Wonderland." That movie features tea, and there certainly is not any tea in "Silent Hill." What can be found in Silent Hill is a mystery, along with a group of religious fanatics hiding in their own manufactured Purgatory. There is also a huge, hulking brute who walks around with a sword and the world's largest and least comfortable hat.
I have never played the games, but from an entertainment level standpoint, "Silent Hill" is one of the best game-to-movie adaptations I have ever seen. It had some very good atmosphere, such as the abandoned town and the "ash snowfall" that was both peaceful and ominous. Then there were the times when the bell would ring, and everything would turn into a twisted hell filled with bizarre denizens straight out of a nightmare.
My biggest complaint was that the movie felt like a video game too often. When the main character and the female police officer encountered those headless, goop-shooting things at the edge of town, I immediately figured it out. "Oh, this is one of those game limits that the designers put in place to discourage people from exceeding the world's design. Time to go back to the town and look around." The scene with the nurses also struck me as something that would fit perfectly in a video game. The story was also very disjointed, even after the doomed town's mystery was revealed, and that is probably the film's greatest failing. Still, plenty of weird visuals, but no tea.
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| Things I Learned From This Show: | |
|  | The first thing to do before adopting a child is to find a save point.
| | | Your tenth-grade geometry teacher did indeed go to Hell; he is bitter about that.
| | | Sometimes parenthood feels like hugging a bunch of blind, epileptic nurses who are carrying chef's knives in a dark hallway.
| | | There are only two ways to get out of Purgatory. Barbed wire is the hard way.
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| | | 8 mins - Try getting her an aquarium. Kids love to watch fish, and fish rarely catch on fire.
| | | 44 mins - Once I had a nightmare that my bathroom was filled with hundreds of those little Scrubbing Bubbles chaps. I doubt any of those are going to show up here, but if they did, they would be angry.
| | | 87 mins - Chicken! Chicken! Bok-bok-bok-bok!
| | | 104 mins - Why has the Fraternal Order of Police been so wishy-washy about asbestos uniforms? What if this happens?
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| Rose: "What are you doing?"
Officer Bennett: "You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law."
Rose: "I don't think you understand. There's something weird going on here. My daughter, Sharon, she's in danger."
Officer Bennett: "If you really cared about that little girl you wouldn't have sped off."
Rose: "Listen to me: she's ill; she sleepwalks!"
Officer Bennett: "Just calm right down. I'm going to find the little girl!"
| Detective Gucci: "November 74, when the fire caught, they tried to evacuate this place as quick as they could. It was hellish. People were dyin' and disappearing. Hell, they couldn't even find half the bodies. That was the end of Silent Hill. These were good people, most of 'em. Some of 'em you might say deserved it, little bit..."
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