I am a pathetic excuse for a human being right now as I've just read this and these and my excitement for Silent Hill, the new movie, is reachign levels at which I cannot possibly be satisfied.
A little background:
If you are not familiar with it, Silent Hill is a video game that took the "survival horror" genre pioneered in games like Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil (both of which notably have been adapted to the cinema screen with rather poor quality films) and turned it into a work of art. The story concerns a guy called Harry Mason who is taking his daughter, Cheryl, on holiday to the resort town of Silent Hill. They arrive late at night. There is thick fog everywhere. Harry catches a glimpse of a little girl in the middle of the road. He swerves to avoid her and they crash. When he wakes up it is light, there is still fog and something like snow falling all around. Cheryl is nowhere to be seen, in fact, no one is.
And so begins Harry's journey through the seemingly deserted town of Silent Hill to find his daughter. At first it's just fog and strange creatures wandering the streets, then suddenly a siren wails and the world goes dark, then the walls turn to flesh and rust and the streets to metal mesh. Clearly something is not right in this town.
I wont spoil the plot of the game or movie by going any further, but the style of the game was unlike anything we'd seen before. Once you've experienced what is commonly reffered to as 'dark' Silent Hill, your ideas about Hell might be like change forever. And there's more to it than just an aesthetic. Silent Hill is a story about the parent-child relationship, about the demons in us all and about the corrupting influence of mankind.
'Dark' Silent Hill is a supernatural creation, but it consists entirely of man-made elements; fans, meshing, rusting metal, dust sheets and sirens. Even the supernatural elements of the story are anthropogenic. the town acts as a commentary for the human condition. 'Real' silent hill, or perhaps the physical 'Silent Hill' is described as a likeable place, a resort on a lake, relaxing and the kind of place a father would take his daughter on holiday (admittedly at her request). 'Foggy' Silent Hill takes us deeper inside. It's cold and lonely. You can't see very far, it's a sort of neutral no space, dangerous, yes, but there are allies to be found there as well. 'Dark' Silent Hill is deeper still and it's here that the real demons are to be found. Allies become enemies, things you thought were true become subverted or are removed completley.
In Silent Hill 2, arguably the best in the series, these elements are stretched further. No longer is the story trying to explain why the town is the way it is, so much as why you are called to be there, why you experience it that way. It is a tale about guilt, and about hidden truth, and ultimately about self-judgement and the escape from that. It is the human condition, stripped and dissected so that we might see those parts of it we ourselves are trying to hide. No wonder it's scary, but it is also, I believe, cathartic and I hope, one day, it might even be considered as an important piece of art, if only because it took a relatively young medium to a much higher level than ahd ever beeen seen before.
The film can be your gateway. Some things have changed (SH is no longer a resort town it seems) but it seems like the director's been faithful to the source material and I cannot wait to see how the aesthetics and philosophies of my favourite piece of horrific real estate appears on a big screen.
Oh and apologies to Eruntane who thought I was going to talk about the Aberdeen University Creative Writing Society. I did too. Oh well, maybe tomorrow.
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