{"id":32826,"date":"2009-12-22T07:54:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-22T07:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jordanhthonextract2.wordpress.com\/2009\/12\/22\/silent-hill-4"},"modified":"2012-02-03T20:30:03","modified_gmt":"2012-02-03T20:30:03","slug":"silent-hill-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/silent-hill-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Silent Hill"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you drew a straight line from The Matrix<\/i> to Dark City<\/i> and then extended the line along the same axis, you\u2019d eventually hit Silent Hill<\/i>, French director Christophe Ganz\u2019 feverishly obsessive cinematic rendering of the acclaimed computer game series of the same name. This odd, grisly, beautiful movie was a box-office disappointment (and has many detractors), but I appreciate its elegance and sensual force more and more, each time I watch it. The detractors have a point—after a strong opening, the narrative quickly becomes snarled, complex and directionless, and the ending is unsatisfying—but I can\u2019t make myself care. Other directors have attempted to do what Silent Hill<\/i> does—to depict a sulphurous, demonic underworld directly beneath the surface of reality (notably, Francis Lawrence in Constantine<\/i>) but no other movie I\u2019ve seen achieves the particular, wonderfully creepy Edward Hopper-meets-H. P. Lovecraft atmosphere that seeps freely from this movie like steam from a street grating.<\/p>\n

Have you ever driven down a dark, deserted country road late on a moonlit night, passed an unmarked turnoff, and (with a hint of unease), wondered, \u201cWhat would happen if I left the highway and followed that road?\u201d Silent Hill<\/i> is about that unease—about the dream horrors that we imagine might be quietly hidden deep within underpopulated pockets of the nocturnal landscape. (Don\u2019t take the turnoff\u2014trust me.) Thirteen minutes after the movie starts, not-particularly-bright housewife Rose Da Silva (Pitch Black<\/i>\u2019s Radha Mitchell), traveling with her troubled, sleepwalk-prone daughter Sharon (whose ailments she\u2019s trying to investigate), drives her Jeep Cherokee down that proverbial abandoned road—and off the edge of the sane universe. Silent Hill, the deserted West Virginia mining town that\u2019s become a dimensional gateway into the depths of Hell, is the cause of Sharon\u2019s somnambulistic distress, and the nexus of a neo-satanic curse that\u2019s bent reality into a multi-layered puzzle-box of blood and evil straight out of Dante by way of Francis Bacon.*<\/p>\n

One of the many strokes of genius in the Matrix<\/i> movies is the creation of not one, but two<\/i> fantastical environments: the \u201cMatrix\u201d itself (that stylish, subtly-tinted simulacrum of urban reality where heroes wear designer clothes and sunglasses, defying gravity as they kung-fu fight and dodge bullets) and the poisoned, rubble-strewn postnuclear \u201creal world\u201d where the same characters wear grime-smeared rags as they flee the red-eyed machines beneath a scorched sky. In almost exactly the same way, Silent Hill<\/i> presents two different nightmare locales, existing right on top of each other (and overlaying yet a third dimensional plane—normal, sunlit, rain-drenched reality, where Rose\u2019s husband frantically and uselessly searches for her), all three occupying the same physical space: the streets and buildings of the titular ghost town (a term that, obviously, may be taken literally and figuratively). The first level (called \u201cAsh World\u201d in the original game\u2019s parlance) looks like reality…sort of. Nothing moves except the steady snow of ash that falls from the gray sky and coats the streets and buildings. Rose\u2019s daughter is a constantly-glimpsed distant figure, endlessly running away like the faraway silhouettes in DiChirico\u2019s paintings. I mentioned Edward Hopper, but Silent Hill<\/i> draws from other surrealist masters including DiChirico, Balthus and Magritte (the yawning, sawtoothed, bottomless mist-shrouded cliffs that surround the town—shearing every exit road to make escape almost ludicrously impossible—resemble the vast, distant rock formations behind Magritte\u2019s expansive landscapes). <\/p>\n

\u201cAsh World\u201d would be frightening enough (and, in fact, contains the crucial clues with which Rose can solve the story\u2019s deepest mysteries) if it were all the movie provided…but there\u2019s more. Moments after Rose\u2019s arrival, a lonely air-raid siren blares from somewhere nearby (a church steeple, as she eventually discovers) and she learns the most important rule of Silent Hill: when you hear that sound, be somewhere else. \u201cThe Darkness\u201d (Silent Hill\u2019s vastly more terrifying alternate reality) falls at regular intervals and for regular durations (again, reproducing the gameplay): the pale gray sky fades to black and all the world\u2019s light vanishes. (I love the brutal efficiency of this particularly terrifying conceit: What\u2019s the first rule of fear, anyway? Darkness.<\/i>) This isn\u2019t the conventional, spooky horror-movie dimly-lit environment: there is no light at all<\/i> except for the unlucky visitor\u2019s Zippo flame (and, later, a perpetually-dying flashlight) that allows flickering glimpses of the surrounding transformation of reality. It’s like the end of Disney\u2019s Beauty and the Beast<\/i> in reverse: every surface curdles and shreds like blowtorched paint melting from metal, revealing an obscene, viscera-spattered industrial-funk wasteland of blood, all steel grids, catwalks and fans, like an underground dance club painted by Hieronymus Bosch. \u201cThe Darkness\u201d is where the mummified, barbed-wire-skewered corpses come to life and the monsters manifest out of thin air: the insects with screaming human faces; the half-formed infant blobs of corrosive flesh; the blood-drenched, knife-wielding, blindfolded nurses (played, in a brilliant directing choice that has been mentioned elsewhere on Horrorthon, by dancers), and, finally, the terrifying, giant-razor-wielding \u201cpyramid-head\u201d ghoul—the kind of demon Tolkien\u2019s Nazguls would run from—who rules the landscape (even the menacing swarms of giant beetles flock to him).<\/p>\n

All of this reproduces the game\u2019s environmental logic, and its survival rules—twice, Rose escapes \u201cThe Darkness\u201d simply by running out the clock. The movie is gameplay come to life, complete with MYST<\/i>-style puzzles—Rose follows a map, finds the keys she needs, interprets cryptic messages—without the additional overlay of characterization or plotting that (for example) the Tomb Raider<\/i> movies attempt to add. According to most of Silent Hill<\/i>\u2019s detractors, this is the problem: watching somebody else play a game wouldn\u2019t be anyone\u2019s first choice for a diverting entertainment. But I fundamentally disagree with the critique: in my opinion (which resembles my opinion of I Am Legend<\/i>, another Francis Lawrence project) the environment is<\/i> the movie, and, once the weirdness begins to cohere into a genuine story, things go astray. The always-interesting screenwriter Roger Avary (Pulp Fiction<\/i>, Killing Zoe<\/i>, Beowulf<\/i>) provides a historical and motivational armature, sketching in the town\u2019s noxious coal-mine fires, deviant church minions, and decades-old sins and curses that explain and define the multi-tiered nightmare locale I\u2019ve described. But none of that really makes much sense, or difference. As Stephen King wrote (in Danse Macabre<\/i>, the nonfiction book I\u2019m always quoting), the basic triumph of The Twilight Zone<\/i> was to present the nightmare \u201cwithout explaining it or apologizing for it;<\/i>\u201d when Silent Hill<\/i> follows this guideline, the results are peerless. (King fans, in fact, will find many of his favorite motifs, including his penchant for cursed towns, creepy religious sects, unsettling rifts in time and space and the horrors that await the hapless travelers who stumble into those dark, otherworldly realms. If King were a filmmaker rather than an author, he might make a movie like this.) Ironically, despite the aforementioned \u201cjust the game, filmed\u201d critique, by attempting to go further, Ganz and Avary nearly undo the fine work they\u2019ve done. As I said, I don\u2019t mind: as far as I\u2019m concerned, breathing life (and death) into a place like this—a town \u201cfrom the dark side of the imagination\u201d (as the Dark City<\/i> trailers memory phrased it)—is achievement enough.<\/p>\n

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[BONUS VIDEO<\/b>:<\/font> If you haven\u2019t seen the movie (or even if you have), you should watch the excellent trailer<\/a> I\u2019ve put up on my site. It\u2019s very well done and conveys the peculiar, eerie tone of Silent Hill<\/i> perfectly. MYSTERIES WITHOUT ANSWERS<\/b><\/i> \/ SECRETS WITHOUT EXPLANATION<\/b><\/i> \/ FEAR WITHOUT END<\/b><\/i>.]<\/p>\n

*The painter, not the philosopher.<\/i><\/p>\n