Alright! D1 has returned!
I did see the Shattered Memories box in the background, but at the start I thought it was just a mistake :D

(BTW Phelous, there's a "Resident Hazard" type of video on Youtube called "Resident Thriller" you might enjoy!)

I guess Dena was right to believe her part wasn't well written, because she mostly just repeated Phelous' points from the first video, then suddenly got angry at him for continuity errors she created by interjecting.

I really love this old school Doctor Who homage. I've never played any of the SH games, but adaptation decay always drives me nuts, regardless.

Should have taken the fan

Who does the title art here? I feel like it's the same person who does Pushing Up Roses's videos and the cartoon versions of all the reviewers.

It's Andrew Dickman doing the art for this one.

By the way great video Phelous! :D

Could you give a link? I'd like to see more of his stuff.

http:// andrewdickman.deviantart. com/

April 6th is my birthday. :)

And yay Dena's cameo wasn't pointless, it actually served a purpose!

Hmm, i'm planning to get into the Silent Hill series since i feel missed out on the whole SH discussions here on TGWTG.

Is it worth it getting Silent Hill 1 on the PSN?

Yes. It's an old, ugly game with clunky controls but if you turn of the lights it's also very immersive and frightening. I'm not sure if I like 2 or 1 more, 3 is okay and 4… oh dear. Really had to force myself through it, it's so atrocious, boring and unpolished. Definitely play 1 and 2, check out 3 and 5 if you want moar and skip 4.

Go for it friend, if its on PSN they might have brushed up a few of the clunkier controls. If you scare easy, be sure to play with a friend. Im a puss so I played SH1 on down to bioshock in the company of good friends.

Honestly though its terrifying and gripping and the only game that might come close to matching its brand of horror might be fatal frame, but Silent Hill and its grotesque twisted visions beats ghosts any day.

When it come's to actually being scary i think the Project Zero (Fatal Frame for you) does a better and i'm not even fan of ghost stories.

What comes to SH1....well it maybe a little clunky but the controls really ain't that bad. The game actually hold's up quite nicely and i actually myself completed it for the first time few month's back (which is kinda shameful considering how much i love SH2 and SH3.

If you're not sure about getting in to Silent Hill, why not give Dena's reviews of the games a shot, see if they pique your interest?

love the combination of you and Dena. Plus the still love the Doctor Who beginning, what does that make you the eighth doctor?

What bothered me the most about Pyramid Head is that he really shouldn't have been in Silent Hill. He is a physical representation of James Sunderland's lust and violent tendencies. He has no relevant to Rose (or to Harry Mason) whatsoever. He's in the movie solely for fanservice. There's just one problem: the fans of the series would just be pissed off, because they know what Pyramid Head's deal is.

Yes but in the movie, The Otherworld isnt about Rose, its about Alessa. If Im not mistaken Alessa sees a similar picture to the one James sees in SH2 before being dragged off to be burned. So arguable she could have summoned this phantom of punishment to punish the people who hurt her. They get the basic premise of Pyramid Head down, Its not 100% but its good enough.

In the first Silent Hill game, the Otherworld was about Alessa rather than Harry. The function and sourth of the Otherworld in Silent Hill 2 is drastically different than the one in the first Silent Hill.

Also, Pyramid Head is not summoned to punish others; he's summoned to punish the one who (unconsciously) summoned him.

Not to mention that Alessa is trapped in a permanent nightmare; the monsters may come from her, but I doubt that they work for her.

Also, the only element of Pyramid Head that the movie creators got right is his general look.

I'd say it's a bit troublesome that Dena can send people to the other world, if it wasn't for the fact that she can send people to the other world.

You know, I watched that movie twice and Phelous's reviews and I still don't remember any of the husband guy's scenes.

Phelous: Ok what the hell did I hit?

*He walks outside to find his House has ramed into......the TARDIS?!?!*

The Doctor:.......

Phelous: Uh.....

Both at the same time:What? What? WHAT?

Do I spy Rose Tyler in the background there? I'm really enjoying your running Doctor Who theme. ^^

O.o While the ending threw me off a bit, I like the in-depth analysis of the movie (and I'm so glad you brought up the pointlessness of the gender-switching).
I'm thinking Dena still hasn't quite forgiven you yet and played along until she could seal your fate. =O

I despise the silent hill movie, if they weren't going to completely adapt to the game they shouldn't of made the movie in the first place

Why not? Having a story loosely based on the game(s) isn't such a bad idea in theory I think. Don't get me wrong, the cult/witch stuff is out of place, but if they changed the story around a bit without getting silly it would've been better than just blazing through the games story in 90 minutes.

It's annoying to see a story get distorted during adaptation especially when it's not necessary to move it to the other medium or being done so the person involved in the adaptation can "put their touch" on it. Silent Hill's is really bad cause they added the witch shit which has nothing at all to do with the SH story.
I said it before but if they wanted to make a different story they should have done that. Silent Hill is really a place a lot of interesting stories could take place.

i agree,this movie is about as appealing as having thousands,upon millions,upon billions of bees stinging me in the ears

I have been loving all these cameos!

Why does seeing a woman in Silent Hill make it seem more scary and hopeless than if it were a man? This is really the intrinsic problem with the character change - it really reeks of American misogyny at almost every level. A man could never love his daughter so much he'd walk into hell for her (because men don't have all those weak emotions driving them, assumably). They put a woman in there because they knew that Americans and Westerners in general generally associate women with being weak both physically and emotionally. It is built into our culture to treat women as precious treasures. Don't believe me? Talk to some older folks or military servicemen about letting women on the frontlines in modern wars.

From a movie standpoint, Rose's role really felt like it should have been played by a man more as well. The female police officer, female cult leader, I mean this thing was a sea of estrogen. It would have been nice to have a male lead to balance it out. But then, it would have been a man versus woman dynamic which would chap our other misogynistic views of how woman can't fight men and men should never fight women because girls are more tender, weaker, softer, etcetera.

I am not accusing you, Yetti, of misogyny, outright, but I want you to strongly consider where your final point in defense of Rose being in the movie originates from. Why does a woman being in that role instead of a man seem so much worse to you? Why does it give us a deeper feeling of hopelessness, and moreover, should it in this day and age?

@ TheYetti:

I guess I have to disagree with you at this point.
I can understand the sex-change in someway, even Ganse himself said, that he wanted an female cast, because women would look more vulnarable than men. But the story where a mother fights everything to save her daughter is in my opinion a little old.
We saw it in Dark Water, the Ring and many other movies. Motherly instincts seem very natural and even woman, who are not exactly mothers seem to often try to rescue children, because of that.
That´s why I thought the first game was so original, making Alessas Mother the villain. Daliah was so great because she was so despicable and Christabella seems weak in her reasons compared to that woman.

In the game itself I got very frightened of many things and I won´t be more frightened if Harry was a woman and I think I would not have mattered If they did not changed that part.
Silent Hill is a place where normal weapons do work, but you can still get harmed from the monsters there. A man would be helpless the same way a woman would be. In my opinion it would be even more interesting because like you said, men tend to get very actionheroish in this movies, so a hero who would not be this way, would be something fresh.
That´s what I like about the games, too. You really seem very helpless an vulnarable, indifferent of what gender you are.

Another point that pissed me a little bit of, was that the Sean Bean Character seems not really caring about his daughter. It seems more like he wanted his wife back. That´s again the point you don´t see very much loving father-figures around in such movies, so again If the sex-change did´nt happen it would be more original and interesting to me.

_________________________ ______________________

About the cultthing in the movie. I think making them witchburners made the story much more simple then it should have been.
Silent Hill 1 is one of the most complicated games I´ve ever played because the whole cult, seem so mazed and everything. In fact all games seem to keep many secrets and the cult has something dark and forbidden about it, that you can´t touch as a whole. The things left in the dark are scary because of the human imagination.
Making there motives that clear (and involving the whole town) just takes a bit of the horror the cult should give you. In fact I was more annoyed of the preachings of Christabella, then scared.
Also I´m still not sure if the Cult is just evil or just a very diffrent system of believes, that has gotten perverted by it´s followers.
Silent Hill the Movie kept that very easy, they where just witchburners fighting the evils in the world, don´t recognizing they being the evil (whooo ironic).

What I wanted to say is that the original cult-plot could have confused some people so they kept it simple.
But I think they could have used the...

"I'm not saying its right, but the idea of a woman in this situation is more frightening because we grow up with the social stigma of men being the more violent sex. "

And yet Silent Hill scares the hell out of me whether I'm playing as Harry, James, or Heather. The Silent Hill series became iconic before Silent Hill 3 came out, and the first two games starred men.

Speaking of the misogynistic belief that women in horror films make the movie scarier, they had BETTER not ruin Heather's character by making her like Rose. Heather was a badass.

I just gotta come in (more than a year later) and say HELL YES to this. especially the part about Heather being a badass, I love her. I completely agree with your points and agree that there is no reason for the gender change as well.

The cult had a goal, to cleanse the world of sin. Its the same goal as the entire Christian Faith. And while some saints had replaced gods, a majority of Americas settlers were Protestants and Puritans, people who don't predominately believe in the saints. The Others practiced in secret meaning that section of the culture wouldn't really translate to today.

This is in a sense in the same thread as Shattered Memories. Its a new take on an old story so its not the original. But as its own story it holds up and is great to watch.

I didn't say Americans weren't familiar with cults that they know and love. Its Multiple Gods and sacrifice to them that Americans aren't familiar with.

Both the Saw and Hostel franchises are worthless torture porn, I wouldn't judge anything by their standards. To see my argument on why i like the sex change its above.

Hollywood is actually the one that puts MEN in scary situations, women in horror movies are usually their to get naked and die. A women living through a horrible situation is a new thing

The things that are least familiar are usually what scare us the most, hence they should really have gone with that.
Also, women in horror movies surviving is absolutely nothing new...Nightmare on Elm Street, Alien, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween and about a billion other horror flicks I'm no doubt forgetting. You're completely wrong on that point....though I do quite like the film. They're called scream queens, it would have been far more uncommon to stick with a man.

I lost sight of the atmosphere!? I hate the movie for losing the atmosphere! That's what I kept saying... It had glimpses of it at the start but it fell apart very quick. Sean Bean interrupts tore it apart every time then we got bogged down by the damn witch burning cult who despite us having to listen blab on still apparently burnt Alessa because they didn't like her face. Dahlia spoke in riddles too but it eventually made sense.
I would have actually been happy to see Silent Hill 1's story translated to a movie. It would have been cool. I also when have been cool with seeing a completely different story. But not a bastardized version of SH1's story.
Harry going to Rose was pretty much just window dressing and I don't see why seeing a female in the situation should be that different.
And I did say Pyramid Head (despite him mostly being there for fan service) would have been all right pretty much if he had more of a purpose like in SH2.

He about sums it up. This is why I deleted the piece of shit movie from my hard drive. Keep in mind I had it in Blueray. It STILL wasn't worth keeping. At least with other movie tie ins they don't COMPLETELY fuck it up. Not even Resident Evil fucks it up this bad, as it's basically a spin off. It doesn't need to be that loyal. But this was a DIRECT copy of the game, which they then messed up every way possible.

What?! Resident Evil franchise destroyed everything it touched! It went from being a movie about zombies to a movie about cleaning up contrived plot holes and slowing down action scenes so they look utterly ridiculous. Killing all of its iconic cast off with pussification and retardation. NONE of the original feeling is there and the whole main idea is mangled.

The Silent Hill movie changed a FEW things, but mostly took the necessary steps to keep the spirit of the franchise alive within it.
This isn't a direct copy. Its more like shattered memories where they use the same names but its in a different situation, and for the same reason. Theres to much to live up to to make a direct copy.

"But this was a DIRECT copy of the game, which they then messed up every way possible."

More like, the first ten minutes Rose wandered Silent Hill was a direct copy of the game.

Whoops, serves you right for buying bluray.

And so we see the birth of Pheleus D1. What I want to know is this: where can I get some purple lightning? Does it come from the same clouds as purple rain?

Allons-y:

- The changes to the Silent Hill movie in comparison to the game remind me of the Doom movie adaptation. For example, demons are changed to mutants for some engimatic reason despite the fact that the Doom franchise has ALWAYS been about demons (can you feel the evil?). There must be some rule in Hollywood that requires the writing staff to mess up a successful storyline if it means being able to say "I did this!" on the credits.

Still, I didn't think the movie was too bad. At least it was more faithful to its source material than most video games movies... damning with faint praise, but it's something.

- Careful, Pheleus. If the universe collapses into itself because of all these paradoxes, I'll be rather cross, as I won't get a proper burial.

Good review.

Those are all really good points, but for some reason, I still think it's a decent enough movie.

I don't know how much this following theory holds water, but perhaps a reason why they unnecessarily changed Cheryl's name to Sharon was because they named the female lead 'Rose'. So they change it to make some sort of reference to a type of flower called 'Rose of Sharon'.

To the makers of the movie with their moon-logic (witch re-burnings and everything), it probably makes sense.

So they changed Harry's gender because they don't think fathers want to protect their kids, and so they could rip a line off from "The Crow"?

Why, that's SEXIST!
Can you imagine if everybody changed the main character's gender in every movie adaptation?

I thought the cult died in the original fire and thats why they are there in the other world and not aging, yet yeah why the fuck was the detective not aging?

If they did it makes little sense for Alessa to have somehow kept them in the otherworld in a shelter she couldn't normally enter just to get in and double kill them later.

"This show has more plot holes than a Micheal Bay film"

jk jk jk, love your reviews.

Really good point about the name change by the way, never thought about it like that.
When you put it like that it is completely pointless.

To bad this movie was ass, It had potential like you said.

Right, because complaining about plot holes big enough to drive a truck through, characters who do the STUPIDEST things imaginable just to help move the plot along, and other characters who add next to nothing to the story ... yes, clearly that means we wanted to be exactly like the game and weren't judging it on its own merits AT ALL.

The move was overly simplified and yet was a confusing mess at the same time. It's a shit movie, no matter what it's based on.

If you like it anyway, great. But if you want to debate about it, don't just ignore the points we're making just because we don't agree with you.

And people wonder why I don't like to talk about the movie. Doesn't matter what I say, someone will always completely ignore it and argue with me based on their pre-conceived notion of what they think I think rather than actually paying attention to what I'm actually saying.

Seriously you're basically just saying you didn't really watch the video if you're saying that's the only point made. I hardly said well everything I hate in this movie is because it wasn't Silent Hill 1 so it sucks.
Those points for Pyramid Head and the nurses are complete guess work as the film doesn't give any evidence to back those up.
It's actually not very clear in the movie if she "died" when dark Alessa came but it's not the point with the aging thing. She was still aged and the cult wasn't...
I did judge it on it's merits and to me it failed on them. I wanted a movie to draw me into the atmosphere of Silent Hill and while looking like it might do that with some parts towards the beginning it destroyed it all about halfway.

How was it a direct repetition of Silent Hill 1? I mean, the town being abandoned due to coal fires? The cult being vaguely Christian and burning witches? And the complete elimination of any real ending even in the movie's own continuity because of that exact change? What happens? Alessa goes nuts and rapes the cult leader with barbed wire. Kay. That's exactly the same as a demonic god being born right?

Not to mention all the goofy crap with the town being on a haunted towns website and cliche rednecks being all "no one don't go down that way no more" and Rose's still retarded insistence on going there. It was more subtle in the game. The cult was drawing Cheryl back but neither she nor Harry were aware of this, in their minds they were just going on vacation to a normal resort town. This makes the events take Harry even more by surprise.

So, it all makes sense. Time traveling Phelous created Phelous D1 who was the Phelous who was trap in the Otherworld. Wait, is Phelous gonna expand on his Shattered Memories Review? I thought Dena was still playing that? Oh well. Why does Linkara's video quality look different? It's not bad just different.

I think it's because Linkara use different editing program than Phelous.

I did not even really mean different from Phelous just different in general.

Hurray for Linkara's cameo and Dena's crossover in this.

I agree with your review 95%...
except whe you blame Christophe Gans for the films problems. He is a very talented director and has a real passion for the games (he also wants to make an Onimusha movie)>

The real culprit is Roger Avary, the film's writer. He took a lot of creative licences with the SH1 mythos and it wasn't well executed (included the lack of symbolism). And worse of all, HE STILL THINKS THAT HIS SCRIPT WAS A BETTER STORY THAT SH1's!!!

Well, he's in jail for vehicular manslaughter and he's ben taken off writing Silent Hill 2... which could be a good or bad thing.

NOTE: Silent Hill 2 movie will actually be based on Silent Hill 3. How? I have no fucking clue...

Yah, but the director usually has the final say in what goes into the movie (except for when the studio intervenes), so if Gans didn't like what Avery wrote, he could have theoretically made him change it.

Nah, producers always make the directors add some car chases and explosions or they're fired.

The reason why the Silent Hill 2 movie is going to be Silent Hill 3 is because when they made the first movie they made it with intent to mix the Silent Hill 1 and 2 stories together. Thats why certain story elements and characters are mixed around.

Well the movie had nothing to do with 2.

Maybe they tried to go for Silent Hill 2 with Sean Bean looking for his wife?
A shame that they had´nt have a twist ending like the game then XD

That is an awesome Pin Head t-shirt.

Thankies ^.^