Topic: So explain Silent Hill to me. (Spoilers from the get-go.)

[Cobra951]

OK, so very dumb chick takes her daughter to a ghost town she knows simmers above an underground coal fire.  She even evades a police officer and rams an iron gate to do this, don't ask me why it's so essential to do all this.  (Yeah, I know about the daughter's nightmares, but I don't see any of these questionable actions as therapy.  But if the plot needs it, OK . . .)  She gets there, and she is off in some other dimension?  That's the part I have the toughest time with.  What is that snowy fog place she falls into, and never gets out of, even after she escapes Silent Hill?  I guess I should have played the games, eh?

[Xessive]

Well, that wasn't snow.. It's ash! Dun dun duN!

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She's dead.. They're all dead. She died when she crashed!

The father (Sean Bean) looks a lot like the husband from Silent Hill 2! It's a pretty uncanny resemblance!

[Cobra951]

Well, poo.  Then she was even dumber than I gave her credit for.

[Xessive]

Yeah, I still enjoyed the movie though

[idolminds]

I laughed at that in the begining. Why run from the cop? Honestly?

[Quemaqua]

Yeah, that was one of my bigger problems with the movie.  Whoever did the script/screenplay should be shot in the nuts.  The visuals were spot on, the acting was only bad when it was forced to be because of the shitty material they had to work with, and the crew really put a lot of love into the film overall.  It's just some of that off-kilter stuff that pisses me off, because *that* should have been the easiest thing to get right.  I was completely surprised that the visuals and everything were so perfectly done but everything else wasn't.  I was expecting the exact opposite.

I still like the movie overall, though.  Those things bother me less each time I watch it.

Anyway, the games are much better.  The plots are better, the acting is weird and stilted but in a way that totally fits the surreal and dreamlike qualities of the games, and while the gameplay isn't the greatest thing on earth, there's a ton of backstory and weird theorizing to be done.

[Xessive]

Yeah the Silent Hill games have a distinctive quality about them. They all have that nightmarish quality, and a that sense when you're unsure if you're awake or not. I don't know about you, but they definitely remind of some of my nightmares as a child. I remember running from all sorts of freakish monsters, and no matter how fast or far I ran they always caught up!

[iPPi]

I thought the movie was very well done for a video-game movie.  It stayed very true to the source material.  Silent Hill is a fucked up place, and it was pretty fucked up in the movie.

Regardless, I've only played SH2 and SH4 for a very short amount of time on the PC before losing interest, but I enjoyed the movie.

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Are they really dead?  I rather thought they entered into like an alternate reality or something like that.

[Xessive]

I thought the movie was very well done for a video-game movie.  It stayed very true to the source material.  Silent Hill is a fucked up place, and it was pretty fucked up in the movie.

Regardless, I've only played SH2 and SH4 for a very short amount of time on the PC before losing interest, but I enjoyed the movie.

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Are they really dead?  I rather thought they entered into like an alternate reality or something like that.

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It's a possibility, I mean it could be a sort of purgatory. The reason why I think they all died is because everyone entered that state in a fatal way: first the citizens of SH in the fire, then the chick and the cop in the car accident. I read a whole bunch of threads which agree that they're pretty much all dead.

The fog effect at the end was very similar to The Others.

[Quemaqua]

That's more or less what I got out of it.  All that stuff doesn't really tie into the games at all necessarily, though.  Though people speculate a bit about the bad ending from the first game.  That seems to have gotten less canonical as time has gone by.

[Pugnate]

I could swear I posted in this thread 20 minutes ago! Anyway despite some of the dumb stuff towards the end, I really loved the movie. It looked gorgeous.

[TheOtherBelmont]

I loved the movie and own the DVD.  I loved the ending as well, it was very Silent Hill-ish.  I've noticed having played the games does seem to make people understand and appreciate the movie more than the people who haven't.  I still wish they would have made some Silent Hill action figures, I want a Pyramidhead one so bad.

[Pugnate]

I am one of those weirdos who hated the game, yet enjoyed the movie.

[iPPi]

I am one of those weirdos who hated the game, yet enjoyed the movie.

I too dislike the game, but my reasons are that I've never had the chance to try it on the PS/PS2.  I've always had to endure poor controls for the PC version, and overall a mediocre port. 

[MysterD]

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It's a possibility, I mean it could be a sort of purgatory. The reason why I think they all died is because everyone entered that state in a fatal way: first the citizens of SH in the fire, then the chick and the cop in the car accident. I read a whole bunch of threads which agree that they're pretty much all dead.

The fog effect at the end was very similar to The Others.

I also.....

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....Thought they were all DEAD -- for the reasons Xessive mentioned.

If that wasn't enough, the end when the girl enters the house and the husband feels her presence, but he doesn't see her AT ALL, really gave it away, I thought....