Silent Hill
Blu-ray (Collector’s Edition)
Director: Christophe Gans
Screenwriters: Roger Avary, Christophe Gans, Nicolas Boukhrief
Cast: Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Laurie Holden, Deborah Kara Unger, Kim Coates, Tanya Allen, Alice Krige, Jodelle Ferland
Distributor: Scream Factory
Rated R | 125 Minutes
Release Date: July 9, 2019

Directed by Christophe Gans (Brotherhood of the Wolf), 2006’s Silent Hill is an adaptation of Konami’s 1999 survival horror video game of the same name. Written by Gans and Roger Avary (Beowulf), the film stars Radha Mitchell (Pitch Black, Rogue) as Rose, a woman searching for her missing daughter (Jodelle Ferland) in the abandoned town of Silent Hill.

A ghost town for 30 years, Silent Hill was the site of a massive coal-seam fire. Now, it exists as a town trapped in a dark dream, occupied by damned souls and hideous monsters. Like the Playstation game, the film incorporates elements of exploration, puzzle-solving, and combat, while building dread through its eerie atmosphere.

For those who are unfamiliar with it, a new Silent Hill game titled Silent Hills was revealed back at Gamescom 2014 in the form of a crazy scary playable demo called P.T. If that wasn’t exciting enough, the game was going to be made by video game legend Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid, Snatcher) and visionary filmmaker Guillermo del Toro (Crimson Peak, Pan’s Labyrinth), and star Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead, The Boondock Saints).

The publishing company behind Silent Hills, Konami, isn’t exactly the most popular kid in school these days for a variety of reasons, but one of them is the fact that they ended up canceling the game—a game that already had a massive fanbase excited for it based solely on the playable demo. Throwing it all in the garbage was a stunning and confusing turn of events.

Del Toro spoke about the game recently and shared his thoughts. You can see what he had to say below.

Visionary director Guillermo del Toro (The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth) is teaming up with the legendary gamemaker behind the Metal Gear series, Hideo Kojima, to deliver a new entry in the classic survival horror video game series Silent Hill, and it will star The Walking Dead‘s Norman Reedus.

Now that’s a mouthful. A mouthful of awesome. You can learn more and watch trailers and gameplay below!

One of the more under the radar movies to show up in Hall H at San Diego Comic Con had to be Silent Hill: Revelation 3D. It’s not that the first movie was horrible, but I don’t think anyone expected to see a sequel made. The Silent Hill panel gave attendees a chance to find out if they should get excited for the new movie not.

The panel started off with two clips from the film. One featured the films heroine, Heather (Adelaide Clemens), facing off against a mannequin monster. The other clip featured Heather attempting to rescue Vincent (Game of Thrones star Kit Harrington) for a group of featureless nurses. The clips captured the feel of the video games, and were at least a little creepy. Unfortunately, the clips were shown without any context, and fell a little flat on the crowd. The 3D in the film looked okay, and the films writer/director Michael J. Bassett said that the film was shot entirely in 3D.

Clicking this it was assumed that it would be a waste of time…and it still very well might be, if it turns out to be bogus somehow.

But at first glance, a slew of comparison pictures seems to indicate that the school in the hit 1999 survival horror video game Silent Hill was in fact the very same school Arnold Schwarzenegger found himself teaching kindergarten at in the 1990 flick, Kindergarten Cop.

There has to be a story behind this somewhere, but it is not I that can tell it. All you need do is continue on over to the other side now to see for yourself.

A pair of new actors have joined the cast of Silent Hill: Revelation, the sequel to 2006’s video game adaptation, Silent Hill.

Malcolm McDowell and Carrie-Anne Moss have been added to the production, and they will be playing Leonard and Claudia Wolf. McDowell is best known for his work on the Stanley Kubrick classic A Clockwork Orange, as well as movies like Halloween (2007), Halloween II (2009), and Bolt. Moss is of course best known as Trinity in The Matrix trilogy, and has also appeared in movies like Memento, Fido, and Disturbia.

A new image for the movie has also been released, which you can see above. Continue reading for more and to read a brief synopsis of the sequel.

We’ve heard for a while now that a sequel to the 2006 video game adaptation, Silent Hill, was on the way. In fact, back in May, it was reported that the movie would begin production by late spring, but of course that didn’t work out quite as planned.

It may have taken a little longer, but now a press release has been sent out confirming that the sequel, titled Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, will begin production this upcoming winter in Toronto. The film is already in pre-production under producers Samuel Hadida and Don Carmody, who just recently delivered Resident Evil: Afterlife…also in 3D.

Don Carmody, producer behind movies like The Boondock Saints, Get Carter, Silent Hill, Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, and Resident Evil: Afterlife, recently spoke to FEARnet during a set visit in Toronto about upcoming projects, including Silent Hill 2.

While discussing Afterlife and things like why they decided to go 3D this time, a question was asked as to how faithful they remain to the original video games these days, or if they just kind of make up their own stories and characters now that they’re four films into the franchise. Carmody explained that they know these movies have to appeal to faithful fans of the games and of movies in general, which is where Silent Hill 2 came up.

Adapting video games into films should not be this hard. Books and plays are turned into good movies on a nearly monthly basis. Christ, even direction is a form of adaptation. The director has both the right and the necessity to cherry-pick and omit from a written screenplay. There is no such thing as “an original film.”

And yet, like trying to pole-vault without an actual pole, the evolutionary link between video game and film has yet to be cleared.

Now to be fair, I liked Silent Hill. It was an atmosphere engine which would have been a whole lot better if an actual script was used.

And as I may have unwisely mentioned in my review of Max Payne at filmarcade.net a week ago, I liked the Doom movie. Don’t blame me… The game came out when I was eight… We were on an anti-poverty board in Chicago together… The parties were hosted by the Annenbergs… SHUT UP!

But other than those, we have been treated to miserable failure after miserable failure. Super Mario Bros., both Tomb Raider films, anything with Uwe Boll’s name on it, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter. They all suck. Granted, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within came close to succeeding, but it failed to adhere to the spirit of the games. Namely, there were no she-dudes, giant chickens, or EEEEEEEENDLLEEEEEEEESSSSSSSS levelling-up.