*Originally published on 7/7/2010
When it comes to making the transition to cinema, video games haven't had a lot of luck. Movies like Super Mario Bros and Street Fighter (both the original and the recent reboot) stunk to high heaven. While I enjoyed Resident Evil as a popcorn flick, it gets a lot of hate for not staying true to the source material. The one exception that proves the rule is Silent Hill.
When I heard that they were adapting the survival horror game as a film, I was really excited. The games have a cinematic feel, are often character driven, and thrive on the eerie atmosphere of the small town. In a lot of ways, it lived up to my expectations. It's an eerie movie and you can tell that they put a lot of thought and care in to it. The town itself looks exactly as it did in the game and the soundtrack is mostly leitmotifs from the various games.
It made a few changes, the mythology of the town is quite different in the games and the ending was overly sadistic, but all in all it was a good movie and it did pretty well at the box office.
There has been talk of a sequel for some time, although it's stayed in development hell. For a while, it was because the director had another project lined up. Given how many years have passed, it might be safe to assume that he is available. Even if he wasn't directing, Gans (the director of the first film) agreed to work as a producer, but hopefully he stays in the chair.
Sometime last year, they registered a domain name to promote the movie, but I checked it out and it only sent me to Sony's homepage.
Another recent caveat has arisen in that Roger Avery, the writer, is serving a year in jail. On the other hand, given the poor critical reception, bringing a new writer on board might be for the better.
The project is apparently still alive as mention has been made of production beginning this spring.
It will be interesting to see if the sequel is a true sequel and follows the same characters. It was made clear that they didn't escape the parallel dimension. There's one interpretation of the film that is consistent with the events, but certainly makes a sequel a bit more difficult. I won't spoil it though.
As far as those characters go, I'm not sure what else needs to be said. That story was kind of done. Maybe they have something in mind; I don't know, but you could make the argument that following the same characters again would result in a rehash. If the original movie's Wikipedia page is to be believed, the second movie will follow Alessa, but several years later (creating a parallel with Silent Hill 3, which did a similar thing).
With the games, each game is a self contained story. References are made to events in the previous games, but each character has their own reason for going to the town and have different experiences based on their own history and psychology. It would be kind of cool to see that approach taken with the movies.
The fact that there hasn't been any recent breaking news on the film suggests that this may never come to pass. Lord knows Hollywood always throws out potential titles only to ditch half of them at the get go. On the other hand, Watchmen was also a film that was talked about and put off for almost a decade. Never the less, it finally was made so there may be some hope yet for the sequel.
If the Fantastic Four movie can get a sequel, there really isn't any reason to deprive Silent Hill of one. At this point, I'm not really expecting one to come to pass, however I still hold out some hope that the project finally kicks into gear as I would certainly like to see it become a franchise.
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Interesting post script to this article, the movie did eventually get a sequel in "Silent Hill: Revelation" and it suuuuuuuuucked!!!!!!
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