Change Your Image
SqueakyG
Reviews
Silent Hill (2006)
Why critics hated it, but I think it's pretty good
SPOILERS are found throughout this review!! For a Silent Hill fan the first half is incredibly faithful and pleasing, taking you through the exact same locations and delivering the same unnerving tone of mounting terror; but the second half sadly goes a bit mental and spoils things. People who are unfamiliar with the games may have the opposite view: the first half may feel far too slow and boring because it won't evoke fond memories of playing the game, and the second half is when things finally get interesting.
Even a fan has to admit that the faithfulness is taken a little too seriously. The plot often plays out too much like a game: Rose finds clues, which lead her to more clues, and so on. Every demon encounter feels like a boss battle; every location a "level". Trouble is you're not playing it, and games aren't quite as fun as a spectator. That's not to say it doesn't work as good horror. I think the film is very successful at capturing the tense unease of playing the game. I don't find any films "scary", but this one comes closer than any other horror I've seen in recent years. The phases between foggy and dark dimensions are handled really well, and cause a Pavlovian response when you hear the air raid siren: you fear the coming darkness because you know how twisted and sick its world is... and you fear Pyramid Head. I also think this is the best a horror film has ever succeeded at making you feel you're in a nightmare. Usually when a horror movie character goes down into the monster's lair you think, "Don't do down there you unbelievable cliché!" But when Rose ventures deeper into the hellish industrial world of rust and flesh, it feels like when you're in a nightmare and you can't resist the pull of what you know will terrify you.
So yeah, it works as a horror film. It's like the other Japanese remakes, except without the... you know... dullness.
Sean Bean's subplot comes in for criticism because it feels tacked on and superfluous. Indeed it is: the studio demanded a subplot for Rose's husband because the script was all-female without him. Some of his scenes are completely extraneous and hurt the film, but I wouldn't want to remove it because it adds the extra dimension - literally - of Christopher searching for his wife in the real world while she is trapped in another.
And all the cute little things for game fans to pick up on? You get Midwich Elementary; Pyramid Head and the huge mega-machete that he drags around; demon nurses; scenes and camera angles identical to the game; Brahms,Toluca Lake and street name references; and the nurse Lisa Garland has a small but faithful part towards the end.
But I'm done aiming this review at fans - it's time to address why most people don't like it. A lot of critics just didn't understand the different dimensions characters found themselves in, both literal and figurative. This is odd, because it's nothing film critics haven't encountered before in successful examples of the genre. I believe these critics - who are able to appreciate films like Jacob's Ladder and Mulholland Dr. - are unwilling to give Silent Hill the same artistic credit purely because of its video game origins, which is narrow-minded. On the other hand I can't blame them completely, because Silent Hill is often let down by bad acting and scripting that unfortunately puts it in a league below other subversive horror cinema. It's nowhere near as bad as Paul Anderson or Uwe Boll's dreck, but it's somewhat spoiled by some tacky production elements.
It's true the film has some unintentional comedy - the kind of moments that are usually ironed out with test screenings. Some of it is cliché and bad character motivation. Motorcycle cop Cybil looks like the T1000 when we first see her, and her arrest of Rose is irrational and silly. Dahlia looks too "made up for film" to be believable. Some lines of dialogue just sound corny, especially exclamations from Cybil and some lines from Sharon (though Jodelle Ferland is a great little actress in general). The scene where the demon nurses twitch into life and start moving rhythmically made one guy in the audience start singing "Thriller", and I'm sure that's not an isolated case. The film reaches unfortunate heights of cheesiness when the cult starts screaming for witch burnings. In fact the entire climax of the film is spoiled by over-theatrical dialogue delivery. The big "explanation scene" from Alessa is a bit overdone and patronising too, rather like a Bond villain explaining his plans too elaborately.
Time to wrap up. I call this a successful horror film, but I have no idea if you will. Fan opinion shows that what is engrossing and scary to one person looks stupid to another. Scenes that made me tense might make you roll your eyes and laugh. I think the first half sucks you into a very palpable nightmare, and the second half tells a good consistent story for those willing to comprehend it. Kind of like the town itself, Silent Hill exists between two worlds. A little too artistically and thematically rich for average moviegoers, but a little too mainstream and goofy to be ranked alongside the cinema it hoped to equal.
Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers: To Live and Die in Starlight (2002)
Not very good, but not very bad
MILD-ISH SPOILERS throughout.
We live for the one, we die for the one. And so this needless attempt at another Babylon 5 spinoff series begins, with Ranger David Martel (Dylan Neal) breaking the Anla'shok code of honour and fleeing from battle rather than needlessly dying. His superiors punish him with the command of an old starship that lost its previous crew in battle. This previous crew still haunts the ship. Martel gathers a small crew, and their first adventure involves a lot of nancying around, chewing scenery and saying "We live for the one, we die for the one" every few minutes.
The thing that made Babylon 5 so great was its five-year plot arc. All non-arc stories are remembered with distaste, in particular the dire TV movies like "Thirdspace" and "River of Souls". When B5 isn't doing its five-year arc, B5 just isn't working. So I don't think a "starship adventures" series would have worked, and this pilot doesn't do anything to disprove my theory. (We live for the one, we die for the one.)
It's easiest to list the things that didn't work:
G'Kar's appearance is the most welcome thing, but it feels pointlessly tacked on. He's the "bridge" between shows, rather like Picard's appearance in the ST:DS9 pilot, or Quark's appearance in the ST:Voyager pilot. He waltzes into private Ranger disciplinary hearings. He just conveniently happens to be one of the ambassadors picked up later in the episode. We live for the one, we die for the one... or did I say that already?
Rather than introducing the new characters subtley throughout the episode, there is one big cheesy scene where the new crew gathers around a table to state their names and specialities. Imagine if a new Star Trek series started with a scene like: "Hi. I'm Will Riker. I'm a First Officer. Yay me!" "Hi. I'm Data. I'm a robot guy. I don't have emotions." "Hi, I'm Tasha Yar. I'm kinda butch and I'm going to die soon."
The Rangers are nothing like their previous portrayal in B5. We remember Marcus Cole as the perfect blueprint of a Ranger, and none of the characters here compare. There is so little spirituality or nobility. The Rangers here are wise-crackin' gung-ho heroes. It's just not right. Oh by the way: we live for the one, we die for the one.
The weapons thing. Oh dear. The first time the weapons chick (Cantrell) jumped into her virtual reality chamber and started punching and kicking fireballs to control the space battle, I thought it was pretty unique. It's good to make weapon control more interesting than simply pushing buttons. But then there was ANOTHER of these scenes, then another, and another. The last one was full on CHEESE, with Cantrell having what can only be described as a laughable spaz-attack. And can I just add: we live for the one, we die for the one.
The "haunted ship" concept is very interesting, but it didn't work well here. There just wasn't room in the plot to squeeze it in. If the pilot went into a series I'd have loved to see more stories about the ghosts. But at the end of the episode the characters basically say: "Well, it looks like we've satisfied those ghosts and we won't be seeing them anymore." Damn!
BIGGER SPOILERS NOW. This pilot introduces what could have possibly been the main nemesis for the series, known as "The Hand". These aliens are said to be about a billion years more ancient than the Shadows, and they have finally got back to our dimension. This just sucks. It undermines the Shadows totally. The TV movie "Thirdspace" did something similar with an ancient deadly enemy breaking out of another dimension, and it was annoying that time too. But anyway... we live for the one, we die for the one.
So those are the bad things about Babylon 5: Legend of the Rangers. But it's not a total loss. There were moments of J. Michael Straczynski goodness. One thing you can say about his writing is that he's not afraid of full-on balls-out cheese. The usual charm and groan-worthy humour can be found here in small doses. And for all its faults, it's still better than an average episode of Enterprise. And aren't ALL pilots rubbish in comparison to the show that blooms from them? Wasn't B5's pilot quite rubbish and cheesy too? I'd have liked to test out Legend of the Rangers for a full 22 episodes before giving up on it.
We live for the one, we die for the one. Or we just watch fairly average TV pilots for the one.