April 22, 2006

[Review] "Silent Hill" (2006)

Tonight, I had the pleasure of watching "Silent Hill", and to say that it's by far the best video-game-to-movie conversion would be an understatement. It's a great movie in its own right, with one small problem...the last two minutes.

The movie does an amazing job of capturing the feel of the games and loosely following the storyline of the original game without aping it or ridiculing it. As a horror movie, it succeeds marvelously...except for the last two minutes.

Basically, the movie was perfect...except for the last two minutes.

I know I'm harping on the last two minutes quite a bit, but to be honest, they're the worst part of the entire flick. If you are a fan of the games, close your eyes and/or leave once the Jeep engine starts and you'll have a satisfactory ending. If you've never played the games, close your eyes and/or leave once the Jeep engine starts and you'll be able to fill in the gaps yourself given enough time.

But if you watch the last two minutes, not only do they betray everything that the "Silent Hill" universe stands for, but it also confuses the living daylights out of you. The group I was in consisted of three people who had played all of the games in the series, and one neophyte. Those of us who had played the games all agreed that the tacked-on ending betrayed the core of the "SH" universe, and the one who hadn't played any said that she felt like she had it...until the ending, and then all comprehension flew out the window.

The amount of confusion over the ending was very apparent when we left the theater as well. Everyone was discussing the ending, trying to figure it out.

So Christophe and Roger, way to go. You did the job better than anyone else. You just added one extra ingredient that really wasn't necessary and it left a bad taste in the mouth of your viewers.

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