First "Repulsion," then "Silent Hill"

So, as you can guess from my oh so clever title, I saw "Repulsion" at the the Film Forum. It was good, but that's not the point, the point is this...first of all oh my God, and second of all are you serious? You can't spring a B noir movie film festival on someone like that. Seriously, I will be going broke because of this.

Anyhow, back to Silent Hill.

SPOILER ALERT!!!....honestly, the story is inconsequential, but in case I bring something up I don't want to surprise anyone at all

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I need to call up my old survival horror game crew and inform them that this movie MUST be watched. Because it's a great movie? Well..no, not really, but it's great in the sense that it's a pretty awesome representation of the mechanics of the Silent Hill universe.

The writers and directors actually seemed to have played the games. It's such a great recreation of the feeling you get playing the game. I was very impressed by the layers of Silent Hill that was captured too. The normal world, the foggy (in the case of the film, smoky) world and the rust world. For those familiar with the games, it's a nice familiar jaunt to sit back and fall into, for those unfamiliar, I think it's still a cool kick just because it is unfamiliar.

Now, considering how things ended, the movie ended as a bad+ (maybe double plus?)...which was an interesting choice I think (for those of you unfamiliar with the game, Silent Hill games have several types of endings considering how you do, they can be good or bad), but even good endings in Silent Hill were ever really good. The bad part is afterwards I kept turning in my head how the movie could've played out to not be a bad ending as if I was playing the game ("Hmm...maybe if they didn't let that girl Anna die...or if Rose didn't get injured so much...or if Rose didn't let Cybil get captured and killed...what if Rose didn't let the demon into her body..."). Yes...now *that's* depressingly geeky.

What's cool was how familiar the soundtrack was. I at first wondered if used the game's composer, but no, the composer based it on the game's soundtrack, which was still pretty interesting. Nonetheless, the Silent Hill series has such a great soundtrack that this was welcome, in whatever form.

What surprised me a bit was the unbelivable amount of sudden violence. Don't get me wrong...Silent Hill is a pretty disturbing graphic game, but much of the violence was suggested through the town and the monsters since the game suggests that Silent Hill is the hell of the person. For example, in the first one, we're talking about the world created through Alessa, in the second one it's the exploration of James' guilt, etc. So the city is rusty (looking almost bloody), the monsters reflect the violence committed (such as child rape suggested by the Abstract Daddy monster from SH2). Any other violence against actual characters is limited to attacks which really aren't violent. Even in SH2 where deaths occur numerous time, it's not as harsh or tortuous even.

This movie, however, seemed to relish a lot in protraying violence done against persons. The death of Cybil is distractingly and gratuitously drawn out. The final bloodbath involving the death of the church/cult members just seems uncharaceristic of not just the game (which yes, is a separate entity I know), but how the movie was so far. The death of Christabella was just...uncomfortable in more ways than one.

Oh...and Pyramid Head...can't leave him out...I am deathly afraid of Pyramid Head. Seeing him come on the screen actually made my heart stop for a second or so.

Overall, great game movie. Considering other game movies out there....this was actually well-done. Considering that I think the first "Mortal Kombat" movie (no, not the subsequent ones, not at all) to be a pretty decently created game-based movie, it's pretty self-evident how dismal the market is for that.