Silent Hill the video game series was creeping out gamers long before the film franchise. Way back in 1999, the very first game was released exclusively for the PlayStation system. It was developed by Team Silent, one of Konami’s in-house development teams led by director Keiichiro Toyama and published by Konami itself. In the game, frantic dad Harry Mason uncovers an evil cult seeking to resurrect the god they worship while on the trail of his missing daughter. He also discovers two overlapping worlds exist. There is our reality and then there is the dark and twisted Otherworld.
Through the years and the scores of games in the franchise, the Fogworld or the Otherworld is never really fully explained as Silent Hill is all about the player being drawn into a nightmare world where nothing is as it seems. Them trying to find their way through the Otherworld and escape from it rather than uncovering its origins of it and its demented, grotesque inhabitants.
The filmmakers behind the two films in the series, Silent Hill and Silent Hill: Revelation, have found it very difficult to lead the audience through a world that isn’t supposed to make any logical sense, is not anchored in the material world. The Silent Hill game experience is rooted in isolation, dread and methodical, clausterphobic pacing. That kind of framing may work works exceeding well on the small screen to the point that the Silent Hill style has been borrowed and cribbed by other designers and developers, but it hasn’t translated to the big screen very well. For the most part, that’s because the filmmakers misunderstood and misinterpreted what Silent Hill is all about. It isn’t about gory spectacles. It is about slow-building fear and an atmosphere that tightens around you.
Here’s a look at this film franchise that is as dreary as its setting.
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