Silent Hill (film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Silent Hill is a 2006 horror film directed by Christophe Gans and written by Roger Avary. The story is an adaptation of the Silent Hill series of survival horror games created by Konami. The film, particularly its emotional and aesthetic content as well as its creature design, includes elements from Silent Hill, Silent Hill 2, and Silent Hill 3 however, no elements are included from Silent Hill 4.[2]
The film follows a mother who takes her troubled adopted daughter to Silent Hill, the town the girl cries out for while sleepwalking. After being knocked unconscious in a car crash outside the town, she awakens to find her daughter missing and the town engulfed in an alternate reality of fog and falling ash. While searching for her daughter, she faces surreal reality shifts and monstrous creatures while uncovering her daughter's connections to the town's dark secrets.
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[edit] Plot
Rose (Radha Mitchell) and husband Christopher da Silva (Sean Bean) are concerned about their adopted daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) who has been experiencing severe nightmares and has begun sleepwalking. Their only clue to the girl's condition is her repetition of the name "Silent Hill." Desperate for answers, Rose takes Sharon to the town of Silent Hill, despite Christopher's opposition. She reaches the town, but is knocked unconscious in a car crash, and awakens to find Sharon is missing.
Rose searches the empty streets of the town for her missing child. Instead, she encounters a series of monstrous creatures and a ragged woman named Dahlia Gillespie (Deborah Kara Unger) who speaks of the terrible things done to her own daughter, Alessa, by the townspeople. Rose eventually encounters a police officer, Cybil Bennett (Laurie Holden), who initially attempts to arrest her. Upon discovering that the road out of the town has mysteriously disappeared, however, Cybil allows her to go free and the two work side-by-side to survive in the hellish town.
Scenes of their search are interspersed with scenes of Christopher's search of the town, with the reluctant assistance of Officer Thomas Gucci (Kim Coates). Christopher discovers documents showing the town was abandoned after a terrible fire 30 years ago, along with a photo of Dahlia's daughter, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Sharon. Christopher is arrested by Officer Gucci when he tries to question the orphanage about Sharon and Alessa, and is told to stop investigating Silent Hill.
Meanwhile, Rose and Cybil find refuge from Silent Hill's monsters in the town church, where they discover the remaining townspeople, a religious cult, headed by Christabella (Alice Krige). After convincing Christabella that she wants to find the 'demon' so feared by the townspeople, Rose is taken to a hospital in the town, along with Cybil. Here, Christabella discovers the likeness between Sharon and Alessa and condemns Rose and Cybil as witches. Cybil is captured as she defends Rose, who escapes the clutches of the cult and descends into the basement of the hospital. Rose eventually encounters a badly burned figure - Alessa - in a hospital bed and a mysterious little girl (Dark alessa) who strongly resembles the missing Sharon. In an extended flashback, Rose discovers that Silent Hill has had a history of ritual witch burnings, and that an attempt to burn Alessa 30 years ago went disastrously awry, resulting in the devastating fire destroying the town. Rose is told that Sharon is a manifestation of Alessa's remaining innocence and goodness, and was taken to the orphanage and subsequently adopted by Rose and Christopher. Rose agrees to help Alessa gain her final revenge.
Rose enters the church soon after Cybil is burned to death by the townspeople, and Sharon is about to suffer a similar fate. She confronts the townspeople and Christabella with what she knows, attempting to convince the cult that they are in denial of their own fate. Christabella stabs Rose. Rose's blood drips onto the church floor. The burned Alessa and the mysterious girl rise out of the pit, and proceed to kill Christabella and the townspeople with huge tangles of barbed wire, leaving Dahlia the sole inhabitant of Silent Hill. Rose and Sharon leave Silent Hill and return home. Nevertheless, although Rose and Sharon are in the same room as Christopher, they cannot see each other.
[edit] Cast
- Radha Mitchell as Rose da Silva, the desperate mother who seeks a cure for her daughter Sharon's nightmarish sleepwalking by taking her to the town of Silent Hill. Director Christophe Gans said that casting the lead for the film is "a matter of feeling. If you play Silent Hill you know that each character has a very special poetic quality. They are both twisted and sophisticated. We tried to keep that in mind when we did the casting on this film."[2]
- Sean Bean as Christopher da Silva, the father of Sharon and husband of Rose who opposes his wife's decision to find answers in Silent Hill. Bean's role in the film was originally kept to the beginning and the end of the movie, but due to studio pressure for a male lead, his role was expanded into a subplot.[3]
- Jodelle Ferland as Sharon da Silva, the adopted, troubled daughter of Rose and Christopher, and Alessa Gillespie, the tormented daughter of Dahlia who was burned alive by the cult of Silent Hill. Gans saw Ferland as "the ideal actress" after viewing the television show Kingdom Hospital and her screen test for Terry Gilliam's film Tideland.[4]
- Laurie Holden as Cybil Bennett, the motorcycle cop from the city of Brahams who becomes suspicious of Rose and follows her into Silent Hill. Gans cast Holden after seeing her in The Majestic. Gans states, "in [The Majestic], she was beautifully feminine and I cast her so I could show her other side, make her strong and sleek. Laurie on the screen is, for me, a perfect manga image brought to life."[5]
- Deborah Kara Unger as Dahlia Gillespie, the mother of Alessa who walks the foggy dimension of Silent Hill after giving her daughter up for sacrifice.
- Kim Coates as Officer Thomas Gucci, an essentially kind-hearted police officer jaded and hardened by his experiences at Silent Hill.
- Alice Krige as Christabella, the leader of the cult of Silent Hill. To prepare for her role, Krige read the book The End of Days by Erna Paris, a book about tyranny during the Spanish Inquisition. [5]
[edit] Production
Gans attempted for five years to obtain the film rights to Silent Hill from Konami. He sent a video interview to them explaining his plans for adapting Silent Hill and how important the games are to him.[6] They were so impressed, he was rewarded with the film rights. Konami Japan and Team Silent, the development team responsible for the Silent Hill game series, became directly involved with the production of the film from the pre-production stage all the way to the post-production stage. In 2004, Gans and Roger Avary began writing the script, which would be the first film in a series of Silent Hill films.[7]
Writer Roger Avary had said that as a boy, his father, who was a mining engineer, used to tell him stories about the town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, United States where coal deposits from the local mine caught fire and released toxic gases into the town. This forced the majority of inhabitants to evacuate forever. Avary was fascinated since childhood by the idea that fires underneath the town would be burning for such a long time and the story of Centralia was used as the basis for the township of Silent Hill.[4] When the script was finished, a studio memo was sent to Gans and Avary that voiced concerns about the lack of a male presence in the film, since the original story contained a nearly all female cast. Gans and Avary added Christopher's character (named after Gans) and subplot and the script was approved.[3]
The film was greenlit on September 19, 2003, and was filmed in both Brantford, Ontario and Hamilton, Ontario[8] as well as on sound stages in Toronto, Ontario in 2005. The film is considered a France-Canada-Japan co-production. Later, American studio Sony bought the distribution rights for $14 million for the United States and Latin America to be released under its TriStar genre film subsidiary. [1]
In order to maintain the feel of the games, Gans had the sound designer of the original Silent Hill, Akira Yamaoka, flown to the set several times.[9] Additionally, Gans had a forty-foot-tall television screen brought onto the set, to which he attached a Playstation 2; Gans then played the original Silent Hill on the system so that the actors and cinematographers could see how Gans wanted to emulate various camera angles and movements.[9]
The movie was filmed in Super 35 film format, except the scenes with the darkness, which were filmed in High-definition,[2]because of its ability to cleanly capture light and digitally manipulate it in post production. The film contains around 107 different sets[10] specifically used to represent the different versions of the town. The bipedal creatures in the film were played by professional actors or dancers covered in latex and makeup. After filming, over 619 visual effects shots were used in the film,[11] with the most prominent uses being the fog that drenches the town, the transitions to darkness, and the insects that surround Red Pyramid. Some of the creatures were also touched up in post-production, with CGI effects such as the burning on the Grey Children, the changes in the dimensions of the Armless creature's legs, the disease that the Janitor spreads, and the barbed wire during Alessa's revenge. However, most of what is seen on film existed physically during production.
Budgetary concerns caused a few scenes in the film to be rewritten. The meeting of Anna in the film had been envisioned differently. It originally featured Anna being attacked by an injured armless creature, where she is saved by Cybil and Rose. Due to budget concerns, the scene was simplified and rewritten.[3] As well, Gans stated that his original vision of the film's finale revolved around six Red Pyramids appearing inside the church, each carrying a different weapon, and slaughtering the cult members in reference to Dante's Inferno.[3] When budgetary constraints prevented this ending from being filmed, he created the new ending that revolved around the barbed wire slaying of the cult by Alessa, which was inspired by the erotic anime called Legend of the Overfiend.[3]
Director Christophe Gans describes the concept of the town's connection to the child Alessa and the cult, "It's a town of people trapped in dark dreams, and she inflicts onto the town what those people did to her body. That is, to me, the meaning of the darkness. The appearance of the town is corrupted in the way that her own flesh was wounded."[12] "It's interesting because the town itself mirrors this fractured psychology--different dimensions, different doubles of the same person."
In speaking about the creatures in Silent Hill, Gans states, "these monsters are [damned], with the poetic direction of the term: they are a little like the Japanese phantoms, i.e. residues of forgotten feelings as strong as hatred or [guilt]."[4] "The monsters in the game are not really monsters, but rather a mockery of human beings. The real monsters are the people, the cultists who tortured Alessa. When I approached the film, I knew that it was impossible to represent the monsters as simply beasts that jump on you."[12]
[edit] Reception
Advanced screenings of Silent Hill were not given to critics by the distributor, and so no reviews could be printed until after the movie's release.[13] Metacritic's average critic's score is 30 out of 100.[14] Rotten Tomatoes shows a freshness rating of 28 percent (with a zero percent rating from the 'Cream of the Crop' critics),[15].[16]
The film opened in 2,932 theaters and earned $20 million domestically on its opening weekend and opened at number one at the US box office. As of January 3, 2007 the film has grossed $46 million domestically and $97 million total worldwide.[1] Silent Hill is in the top 10 video game film adaptations listing on Box Office Mojo (from 1980 to present). Silent Hill is at #6, between #5, Resident Evil: Apocalypse which grossed domestically $51 million.
While the film received mixed reviews, Ferland's performance has been praised by critics and fans.
According to The New York Daily News, the film's poster of a mouthless Sharon was the subject of some vandalism in New York City, Los Angeles and elsewhere, with many malefactors drawing cartoon mouths (smiling, screaming, sporting vampire fangs, etc.) or placing stickers where her mouth would be.[17]
[edit] Release
The film was released to theaters on April 21, 2006 in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Ireland. France, Belgium, Hungary, and Greece also saw April releases. The film was later released in 19 other counties in 2006 which include Russia, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Mexico. The film was rated R by the MPAA for strong horror violence and gore, disturbing images, and some language, 15 by the BBFC for containing strong language and bloody horror, and MA 15+ by the OFLC for containing strong horror violence.
[edit] DVD
On August 22, 2006, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and TriStar Pictures released the DVD, Blu-Ray, and UMD versions of the film in North America. The DVD and Blu-Ray were released in both Anamorphic Widescreen 2.35:1 and Pan and Scan versions and both included a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track.[18] The releases also included a number of special features, such as film previews and a six part making-of Silent Hill documentary. The film was also released on UMD for Sony's PlayStation Portable on August 22, 2006. There are no special features but the disc includes a 1.78 widescreen format, Dolby Digital 2.0, and subtitles.
Director Christophe Gans will supervise a remastered 2 disc collectors edition DVD release of the film for release near completion of the second Silent Hill film. It has been hinted that the release may be a HD DVD/DVD bundled package.[3] An HD DVD was released in Germany by Concorde Home Entertainment on August 22, 2007. It contains the film encoded in the VC-1 video codec and also has the main audio track in DTS-HD. It retains the film aspect ratio of 2.35:1.
[edit] Music
The score to the film consists almost entirely of music from Akira Yamaoka's soundtracks to the four main games in the series. They were arranged by the film composer Jeff Danna (Resident Evil: Apocalypse, The Boondock Saints), with some tracks appearing in almost identical form to their in-game counterparts, while others were recreated entirely.
[edit] The 'real' Silent Hill
Writer Roger Avary states about Silent Hill that
"the base idea was that this is not a haunted house, it's a haunted town, y'know, separate from our reality, but it also exists within our reality. So you effectively become a ghost during your time there. And it's a very terrifying emotion, that you are a ghost of yourself. Frankly I think it's a theme that's followed me."'
In researching the different elements of Silent Hill, screen writer Roger Avary was inspired when he heard of Centralia, Pennsylvania, and decided to base the film on it. The population of the town has dwindled from over 1,000 residents in 1981 to 12 in 2005[19] and 9 in 2007,[20] as a result of a 46-year-old mine fire burning beneath the borough.
In 1962, an exposed vein of coal ignited, due to the standard policy of burning the garbage on a weekly basis in the borough landfill. Attempts to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful, and it continued to burn throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Adverse health effects were reported by several people due to the carbon monoxide produced.
In 1984, Congress allocated more than $42 million for relocation efforts. Most of the residents accepted buyout offers and moved. Today a handful of occupied homes remain in Centralia. Most of the buildings have been razed, and at casual glance the area now appears to be a meadow with several paved streets through it, and some areas are being filled with new-growth forest.
[edit] Sequel
It is confirmed by director Christophe Gans that a sequel is "officially ordered and well on the way."[3]
As of April 2007, Producer Don Carmody has stated that a screenplay is slowly being developed and that "[Gans is] involved pretty heavily in another project right now" and will likely not return as director.[21] Gans has stated that he will stay close to the film's production regardless of his status as director. The film's story is unknown as well, but it is confirmed that the film will retain the visual look of the first film.[3]
In July 2007, Avary said that he would not be returning to collaborate on Silent Hill 2 on the account that Gans would not be returning, either. The sequel will continue in development without Avary or Gans.[22]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Silent Hill (2006). Box Office Mojo.
- ^ a b c Wilson, Stacy (2005-07-17). "Silent Hill" Interview with director Christophe Gans. About.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Prin, Kevin (2006-12-22). INTERVIEW : CHRISTOPHE GANS (SILENT HILL) PARTIE 1 (French). DVDRama.
- ^ a b c Ferry, IIan (2006-04-02). Master Class Silent Hill (French). Ecranlarge.
- ^ a b Silent Hill - Production Notes. Sony Pictures.
- ^ Douglas, Edward (2006-04-20). Exclusive: Director Christophe Gans. ComingSoon.
- ^ Gans, Christophe (2006-03-10). Silent Hill - Notes from the director Christophe Gans - "On Preserving and Contributing to the Mythology of the Games, On Interpreting Silent Hill's Monsters". Sony Pictures.
- ^ Internet Movie Database - List of Films shot in Hamilton, Ontario. Retrieved on 2008-01-29.
- ^ a b Interview with Akira Yamaoka
- ^ Thorpe, Valarie (2005-07-17). Really Scary Visits the Set of Silent Hill. Really Scary.
- ^ Bielik, Alain (2006-04-21). Silent Hill: Nothing Quiet About These Horrifying VFX. VFXWorld.
- ^ a b Bettenhausen, Shane (2006-02-23). Silent Hill Movie Interview: The Director's Cut. 1UP.
- ^ :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews :: Silent Hill (xhtml)
- ^ Silent Hill (2006): Reviews
- ^ Silent Hill - Movie Reviews, Trailers, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes
- ^ Silent Hill - Movie Reviews, Trailers, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes
- ^ Dziemianowicz, Joe (2006-04-12). Read my lips, a film poster inspires self-expression. New York Daily News.
- ^ Woodward, Tom (2006-06-19). Silent Hill (US R1 DVD). DVDActive.
- ^ Krajick, Kevin. Fire in the hole, in Smithsonian Magazine, May 2005
- ^ Couch, Stephen. Presentation at Eastern Section meeting of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, June 2007
- ^ Silent Hill 2 News. Shock Til You Drop (2007-04-22).
- ^ Ryan Rotten. "EXCL: Avary Skips Trip to Silent Hill 2", ShockTillYouDrop.com, 2007-07-18. Retrieved on 2007-07-18.
[edit] External links
- Silent Hill at the Internet Movie Database
- Official Website
- Quicktime Trailer, Multiple Resolutions
- Silent Hill the Movie at Rottentomatoes.com
| Preceded by Scary Movie 4 |
Box office number-one films of 2006 (USA) April 23, 2006 |
Succeeded by RV |
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