Silent Hill 2006 International, Christophe Gans.
Silent Hill, adapted from the video game of the same title by French director Christophe Gans (The Brotherhood of the Wolf) is not a masterpiece, but I think that the outrage being leveled at it by the critical community (it scores a paltry 25% at Rotten Tomatoes) is unwarranted. Silent Hill is as interesting as it is imperfect, both as a horror film and as the latest (arguably most successful) attempt to marry the ever-expanding universe of video games to the silver screen.
The film opens with nine year-old Sharon Da Silva (Jodelle Ferland) sleepwalking across a highway. Her parents Rose (Radha Mitchell) and Christopher (Sean Bean) find her teetering at the edge of a cliff, over which a neon cross hovers in the distance, screaming "Silent Hill! Silent Hill!" We briefly see the scene through Sharon's eyes: the cliff leads downward into a blazing inferno.
Rose arbitrarily decides that the only thing to do is to find this Silent Hill which, as it happens, is the name of a West Virginia town (modeled after Centralia, PA) abandoned since 1974 after all of its inhabitants were killed in a mining disaster. So she sets off with Sharon, in the middle of the night no less, against her husband's advice and the sinister warnings of a local diner waitress. She's pulled over by a traffic cop (Laurie Holden) but speeds off into the town where an apparition that bears a striking resemblance to Sharon causes her to veer off the road. She hits her head on the steering wheel and passes out; when she comes to again, Sharon is gone.
The next part of the film unfolds with the logic of dreams and video games. Rose, joined by the cop, wanders about the town trying to solve the mysteries of Sharon's whereabouts and the town's demise. These scenes have an ethereal beauty, alternating between daytime, in which ash falls over Silent Hill like snow, and the intermittent horrors of an artificial night, heralded by sirens, in which the town is transformed into a demon-populated hell.
Article comments
1 - getitstraight
you wrote: anti-Catholic intensity of Pier Paolo Pasolini WRONG
is that why he made the most prized catholic movie of all time? get your facts straight.
2 - A. Horbal
Do you mean The Gospel According to Saint Matthew?
3 - Duane
Haven't seen the movie, haven't played the game. But that was a fascinating review. I have also wondered why creepy kids in movies are so effectively scary. Interesting points also about trying to maintain logical consistency in a movie where the story is illogical to begin with. Most, if not all, horror movies ask us to abandon our common sense and logic for a couple of hours.
4 - Rodney Welch
Horbal -- I can't speak for getitstraight, but he does raise a question as to why you say "anti-Catholic" when it comes to Pasolini. Were you possibly thinking of Bunuel?
5 - A. Horbal
Well, clearly it has to change if it's raising this many questions.
I was thinking specifically of The Gospel of Saint Matthew, which I've always considered something of a slap in the face to the aristocracy of the Vatican. By stripping the Gospel of Matthew down to its bare essentials, Pasolini is reclaiming Christ for the poor, for the political. The minimalism of this film stands in stark contrast to the pomp and circumstance of Catholic ritual.
The excess common to many of his other films is a rebuke to the strict, formal customs of the Catholic country in which he lived and worked. There's an anger and intensity directed at the leaders of the church that expected the people to follow these rules, but didn't follow them themselves. His films both celebrate life and lampoon those who would presume to dictate how it should be lived.
For better or for worse, that's what I was thinking. Buñuel is probably a much better, much more intelligible choice. Thanks!
6 - congfused
im so lost when did the mom and the daughter actually die?