Game Eaters

Friday, January 20, 2006

The Silent Hill Trailer.

Find it here.

Doesn't look bad. Looks like they played the fucking games.

Still though... maybe I'm just too jaded, but Silent Hill should, ideally, be the best horror movie since The Shining. At best, this looks like it'll be a decent Hollywood adaptation of the look, feel, and premise of the games. Yet somehow I doubt the storytelling ambiguity will be as... ruthless.

Silent Hill is just about the most disturbing horror IP of the last 10 years if you ask me. Stupid voice acting aside, it achieved the same elemental terror of Blair Witch, Jacob's Ladder, Night of the Living Dead, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It wasn't "just another horror story." It was, for me, one of the defining horror stories of contemporary society. Themes of societal collapse, the disintegration of the family, and body horror have never been more visceral or vivid. Though Silent Hill was a Japanese game, it captured for me the anguish of America's self-destruction. It's horrors were unspeakable: the Holocaust meets Middle America.

Maybe this is why I'm disappointed that the Silent Hill movie looks merely "good." It has the potential to be a definitive piece of horror cinema, just as it is a definitive piece of horror gaming.

Silent Hill has some incredibly potent imagery, and the filmmakers look like they've at least realized it's something they can take seriously. But it still looks like it's going to be a monster-oriented CG-fest. A scary monster-oriented CG-fest you can take seriously... but still a CG-fest.

Oh well. I'll see it of course.

1 Comments:

  • I know what you mean. Of course the movie won't be as good as the game--the game is simply one of the best horror stories in any medium, period. No one short of David Lynch or Kubrick could have done a Silent Hill movie that was as bleak and dirty and terrible as the original game.

    That said, it looks like the movie could have turned out a hell of a lot worse. Whether it does the games complete justice or not, it looks like it has the potential to be the best game-to-movie adaption ever. For what that's worth.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 2:23 PM  

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