Now that the batting average for live-action video game adaptations isn’t dog water—thanks to a few recent award winners—it’s hard not to look back at the medium’s earlier cinematic stumbles and wonder, were they really that bad, or were gamers too busy yelling about lore accuracy to appreciate their efficacious vibes?
Silent Hill‘s first film outing, nearly 20 years ago now, has long been dismissed by purists in a way so reflective it’s like breathing—automatic, unexamined, and rooted gripes over it not being a 1:1 port of the games and that it plays fast and loose with lifting iconography over narrative. But like a thistle weed pushing through cold concrete, giving bloom to a flower, unpruned to fandom negging like botany’s version of imitation crab, rewatching Silent Hill without the fogposting fandom yelling in your ear about canon reveals something else entirely underappreciated.
Not only is Silent Hill a moody, atmosphere-driven horror flick that gave a damn about tone, texture, and fidelity to the series’ spirit, but it also elicits the rare reaction: “We don’t make movies like this anymore.”
© Sony PicturesAmid the decades-spanning online debate over whether the Silent Hill movie is good or not, it’s damn near impossible not to concede at least that the film nails the game’s overall atmosphere. Much of the film’s eerie success owes itself to director Christophe Gans, a devoted champion of the Silent Hill games. Paired with Roger Avery’s script and the haunting craftsmanship of set designer Peter P. Nicolakakos and costume designer Wendy Partridge, the movie conjures a world teeming with ethereal, otherworldly creatures. Their unnerving gaits and twitchy mannerisms are brought to life by professional dancers and just the right dose of CGI.
The one contentious point of derision comes with its original script lifting a couple of creatures, including exhibit number one of horror gamers’ hear-me-outs, Pyramid Head, despite the yadda yadda of him explicitly being one of a few of the film’s cherry-picked manifestations of the Silent Hill 2 protagonist James Sunderland’s whole bottomless psychosexual damage.
But suppose you ignore that mind goblin screening in the recesses of your gamer mind for a moment and instead appreciate the movie as a cinematic demo disc of old, a pastiche of the first three games with a drizzle of the fourth, blending practical and special effects and previewing in a kind of vertical slice what the whole deal of the games is, building dread and eldritch horror in its wake. In that case, you can appreciate what it was going for and had the wherewithal to leave fans’ favorite protagonist toys alone in the toy bin (for now), instead opting to use original characters as viewers’ vehicles into its beautiful, dark, twisted fantasies.
© Sony PicturesSilent Hill sees parents Rose (Radha Mitchell) and Christopher (Sean Bean) struggling with their adoptive daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) and her sleepwalking and incessant nightmares about the eponymous fog-filled town. Much to Christopher’s protest, Rose takes Sharon on an impromptu road trip to the abandoned town, thinking it’ll unearth answers to what’s been troubling the girl, leading her to draw demented drawings she doesn’t remember making while awake.
Naturally, she gets in a car accident and loses track of her sleepwalking child, and must venture into the fog-riddled town to find her. While she doesn’t get answers, she encounters a nosy cop, Cybil Bennett, played by a pre-Walking Dead Laurie Holden, and increasingly macabre creatures and militant cultists as she doggedly looks for her baby.
While Silent Hill‘s story isn’t exactly rocking the Richter scale in terms of having an enthralling narrative—landing somewhere in the center-left of your garden-variety horror fare of the time—it absolutely passes the macabre vibes test. Granted, Gans’ demo-disc approach to the film, sampling the franchise’s most iconic elements while stripping away its more introspective psychological horror layers, is a glaring sin that makes the film feel like one of Sharon’s crayon sketches rather than a decent psychological tapestry.
Still, even with all those paint-by-numbers story beats, the film’s legacy as a primo showcase of creature and set design makes it an ample cinematic vertical slice of the game worth indulging in.
© Sony PicturesPlus, despite how dark as hell the film is (literally, it’s a pretty low-lit film at times), its smattering of CGI still holds up quite well. Likewise, the cool, blue, fog-like, rusty-brown industrial, and infernally red, hellish realms of Silent Hill become progressively more chaotic the further Rose ventures into the secluded West Virginia coal-mining town. Like a horrorcore kaleidoscope, backgrounds transform in real time, shifting between ash, flower petals, and some mysterious, fleshy third thing before dissipating into the air like mist, creating a dreamlike effect as the world ripples and changes around her.
Aside from the human cast, Roberto Campanella’s silent yet imposing physical performance as Pyramid Head—sorry, “Red Pyramid”—is a ferocious highlight of the film. Despite the meta resignations of his “not supposed to be here,” he delivers a revelatory performance: effortlessly crunching bodies, degloving skin from chests like a pitmaster who prides themselves on fall-off-the-bone barbecue with otherworldly force, and flinging it at the church doors with a sickening slap. That shit whips. Also, the dark nurses’ synchronized twitching and contorting under flickering light, like possessed marionettes, is equal parts captivating and grotesque nightmare choreography you can see behind closed eyelids.
© Sony PicturesNaturally, it doesn’t hurt that when Silent Hill nods to the games with Easter eggs, it does so in a way that’s not wholly distracting from the film. Subtle touches like game-accurate storefront signs, the sonic underpinnings of air-raid sirens, and, most notably, the soundtrack by game composer Akira Yamaoka give it a bona fide aura of Silent Hill, even if its story is lacking. Hell, the only time you don’t hear Yamaoka’s timeless score as the suburbanite mom fumbles her way through light puzzle solving, building hopping, and running through thick fog without a map is when you hear Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.” Which, to the film’s credit, is a truly inspired choice.
Aside from the costuming, set design, and being one of the rare few films Sean Bean doesn’t die in, Silent Hill doesn’t get enough credit for the stellar child acting by Ferland, who plays double duty as Sharon and the town’s enigmatic fire-starting hellion, Alessa. If we’re being honest, Ferland delivers the most memorable performance among all the actors, despite the few scenes she’s in.
© Sony PicturesAlthough Gans’s first Silent Hill flick isn’t perfect, or by any stretch of one’s restless dreams, you can feel in its artistry—its creature designs and cinematography—that it’s the kind of earnest, pure appreciation for the franchise. It’s a film that, in retrospect, earns its kudos not by regurgitating the games beat-for-beat, but by channeling their haunted essence with every scene without overly relying on cheap, referential nods to endear itself to viewers in the know. It’s a platitude that’s echoed but not often merited in contemporary live-action video game projects that feel like they’re getting ahead of fan outrage by profusely declaring it’s for them when it should feel evident by what’s on screen.
In an era where video game adaptations continue to be in vogue while finally learning to breathe on their own, using their source material as a crutch to endear themselves by virtue of existing, maybe it’s time we gave this one its fog-fed crackroot flowers. Sure, it’s not flawless and, in retrospect, likely made worse by its sequels (as many a franchise is wont to do, chasing perceived successes). But it’s still decent. And maybe that’s enough.
Silent Hill is streaming on Peacock.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
English (US) ·