Silent
Hill marks the second video game turned horror film that I’ve seen in the
last month. In my review of Stay Alive I made mention of the fact that I came
of age in a generation well before video games (as we know them today) existed.
When I started high school there was one gigantic Pong machine in my hometown
which did claim a handful of my quarters, but the world of Nintendo and Playstation,
with it’s attendant sticks and joy buttons is as alien to me as the dark
side of the moon. Occasional bonestaff film critic Sir Dizzy expressed his disbelief
at my claim and told me that as a way to perhaps mend this untenable rupture in
the fabric of reality, he engaged in a ten-hour gaming marathon, all the while
pretending to be me. It’s a good feeling when you know your friends got your
back.
Though
neither film will be well received by the critics of the world, I found Stay Alive
marginally entertaining as a novelty. There were so many groaningly bad lines
that it gave it a measure of camp charm. Silent Hill on the other hand is deadly
serious. There are opportunities to poke fun (like the time 3 Puritans suited
up and marched into Hotel Hell like the Ghostbusters, which prompted a “Who
ya gonna call?” out of this smart-aleck) it fetched a tension-breaking laugh
from those around me but most of the laughs come when Radha Mitchell would start
down a flight of stairs that was such an obviously bad idea that it would cause
people to titter. “Now that’s good thinkin’.”
I
don’t know exactly how much plot a video game like either of these get across
to those who play them, and I’d be hard pressed to imagine how faithful the
films are to the games, but Silent Hill had enough to it that it didn’t feel
video-gamey to me. True, Radha spends quite a bit of time wandering through creepy
corridors and down the above-mentioned flights of stairs, but not to a point where
you think to yourself that the film is nothing but a random succession of freakish
encounters. There were rumors circulating in the lobby that the film had chased
a bunch of unnerved girls from the theater the night before, but if anything I
was disappointed in the freak-factor. Mostly due to the fact that they showed
way too much of it in the trailer. In any case, I was never particularly scared,
and I thought the “disturbing images” were pretty tame considering the
possibilities engendered by such a premise. The most laughable involved a bevy
of mummified nurses. They were leggy with cleavage to spare and when they started
to move it was sort of choreographed like the back-up singers in those classic
Robert Palmer videos. You’re gonna have to face it, you’re addicted
to love.
Storywise,
Radha and Sean Bean’s adopted daughter Sharon is beset with horrible night
terrors, vivid somnambulant episodes where she envisions an identical twin trapped
in bowels of some hellish netherworld to wake up screaming the name Silent Hill.
Internet research turns up a ghost town in West Virginia by that name - supposedly
haunted and off-limits due to coal mine fires that still smolder below the town
itself. Thus imagining a visit as the only solution to their daughters worsening
condition Radha steals away with Sharon late one night hell-bent on finding this
city of dreams. As she nears Silent Hill she is repeatedly warned off and told
that a road to the place no longer exists and captures the attention of a woman
motorcycle cop who winds up chasing her all the way there only to become trapped
in the nightmare herself.
Meanwhile,
Sean Bean is in hot pursuit, but meets a police barricade on the old road and
proceeds into Silent Hill in a police car. It is on this ride in that we get some
of the backstory from a policeman who grew up in Silent Hill and whose father
died in the great fire. It was 30 years ago when the blaze ravaged the town taking
many of the townsfolk with it. The cop alludes to a number of the towns population
who got what they deserved and slowly we piece together a story that involves
a group of atavistic religious zealots of the Puritanical persuasion who played
a key role in turning Silent Hill from a normal town into an open portal to one
of the outter wings of hell.
By
this time, in her frantic search for her daughter Radha has encountered a pretty
good number of twisted and freakish hell-dwellers, and witnessed the paper thin
facade of a ruined town melt away to reveal cavernous depths of fiery caged pits.
She does battle with a child-molester turned pretzel for his sins, and a strange
creature wearing a steel Christopher Columbus hat who wields a knife the size
of a surf board. I will certainly understand the viewpoint of any critic who lays
waste to the film. But I’d have to give it a grudging thumbs up to people
who enjoy this sort of bizarre stuff. I was entertained, and never felt bored
or unchallenged by the story. Most of which is revealed in kind of a cheesy flashback
done in a scratched and grainy home movie style that explained how the witch-hunters
brought this fate upon the town and themselves. This little bit of narrative show
and tell wasn't particularly necessary and will result in critical demerits galore.
Personally I'm ready for there to be a new focal point of our greatest fears beyond
creepy and elusive 10 year old girls with dark hair, brown eyes and pasty skin.
The
great climax is kind of a Carrie-esque revenge scenario that featured the films
more bloody and violent gore. And the ending itself is an effective bit of mind-bending
that makes the audience think back upon the events and realize that there were
3 separate levels of reality at play in the film and not everyone ends up on the
same plane.
Who's
In It: Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Deborah Kara Unger, Laurie Holden
