Author: Mateusz Kowalski. Mat is a neurospicy chaos incarnate working in the video games industry. Fan of everything occult, horror, fantasy and retro with occasional sprinkle of sci-fi and Magic: The Gathering. A self-proclaimed failed cook.

Disclaimer: for the sake of brevity, some of the plot parts weren’t elaborated on. There will be some mild spoilers here and there.

Picture it – a dysfunctional family chased by their inner demons does unimaginably stupid things. With its mother and daughter arriving in a small town to keep the nightmares at bay, everyone ends up entangled in a bigger-than-thou scheme spanning years back. And no, this is not a plot of season 4 of Desperate Housewives, but of a cinematographic adaptation of Silent Hill.

With Silent Hill 2 Remaster’s release and October being in full swing, it seems natural to have a look at how the attempts to bring the franchise back to full screen are going. Here comes a full disclaimer, they didn’t go so well. At the same time, we owe the Gans/Avary duo some gratitude for the attempt to bring an extremely cryptic mythology of the first two games – at least in the first installment.

It seems it would be best to address the elephant in the room immediately: as a horror movie, the first Silent Hill gets extremely convoluted, almost collapsing under its own pile of, at times, barely fleshed-out ideas and changes to the original. As a Silent Hill adaptation – it gets even worse, with changes to the source material seemingly being dictated not by the wish to make the story fit the medium of the big screen and to entice the disenfranchised viewers to buy a game. On the contrary, all the changes seem to follow the logic of “we have Silent Hill at home.”

So why did Konami not stop this title at the stage of the production limbo? The answer is simple: for the same reason you don’t expect people at Disneyland to have exactly the same experience as when they watch the movies. At its core, the first Silent Hill is a showcase of the most iconic things. Right off the bat, the movie tries to establish a brooding atmosphere: Rose da Silva embarks on a quest to find a cure for her daughter’s (Sharon) nightmares and leaves the father, Christopher, at home while travelling to the titular town, said to be the source of the torture. The daughter goes missing, the perpetually falling snow isn’t snow but ash and the settlement itself soon does everything to make sure Rose doesn’t make it out alive, including throwing at her a parade of nurses, monsters and a mandatory cameo from the Pyramidhead. What would Disneyland be without Mickey Mouse, after all? Names and main characters’ involvement changes aside, this is still bearable until we get to the core of the plot which is: Silent Hill is a demon amusement park created by accident due to a botched summoning ritual. And that’s where my major gripe with Silent Hill lies.

The original games were about a person’s slow descent into madness while trying to search for what they lost. It was a balancing act of trying to understand the reason behind all the happenings while also trying to regain sanity and escape the hellish chaos of Silent Hill. And it was done perfectly – the more you got entangled in this nightmare, the more you understood its origins. You empathised with the characters, displaying all shades of grey morality – evil was, in the end, a manifestation of torment. Here, it’s the process in reverse – it’s not about trying to find oneself out from the descent into madness. It’s about trying to make it out of the pre-existing nightmare. Everything is simplified, served on a silver plate and yet… it tries to untangle the mess it caused somehow with the urgency of a bus driver with a urinary tract infection, especially in the latter parts of the movie, tripping over its own logical flaws (things have already gotten worse, why are you trying to cure the black plague with cholera?).

There is still one redeeming factor of the first movie that I have only briefly touched so far and it’s the overall audiovisual atmosphere. Even if the effects are now extremely dated (CGI lacking crispiness due to the limitations back then), the overall attempt to bring Silent Hill itself to life was good enough with some camera shots still encapsulating this “this is wrong” feeling (and not in the way you might feel while watching debates in the House of Commons). Grit is gritty, blood is bloody, taint is tainted and the actors actively try to carve out some emotions (even if acting is overall extremely uneven). Even the failed attempt at a cathartic Rose going Rambo only to be held back by a revelation or two can’t fully bury the aforementioned redeeming factors, which was even pointed out by the critics back then, praising the overall dense ambience.

Then, six years later, in the middle of a 3D movie craze, someone came up with the idea that the sequel needed to be done. And no, the original filmmakers weren’t responsible for this. The recipe for the sequel was almost insulting to the logic of the original script (not to even mention the games themselves) – bigger, bolder, faster and with a redux of the original plot. If someone were to title the sequel Silent Hill 2: Electric Boogaloo, it would probably do the movie service as the original subtitle – Revelation – hints at something that is in places so far-fetched, no sane person would call it good screenwriting. In fact, if you enjoy movies from the “so bad it’s good” category, Silent Hill 2 ticks all the boxes.

Exposition: Sharon was rescued by Rose, who stayed in Silent Hill instead. Reunited with her father, she tries to live a relatively normal life when suddenly, the cult that seemingly could botch drawing a straight line, is after her again – to finish what they started and bring that demon once and for all. Then, with a gallopade of ubiquitous jumpscares and reliance on the 3D effects, accompanied by young Jon Snow- strike that, Vincent Smith (Kit Harrington with less facial hair), Sharon tries to figure out who she actually is (been there) and Christopher wants to find Rose (done that).

The sheer overload of everything with a subplot of Pyramidhead decapitating what looks like a Hellraiser reject, unfortunately, leads to an extremely anticlimactic ultimate confrontation between Sharon and Alessa. It’s as tense as the season finale of The Great British Bake-off: yes, there’s shade and family drama but we both know they’ll reunite over a nice fireplace. Or, in the case of the protagonist – in a carousel-made pyre. Paradoxically enough, all of the above doesn’t mean that the movie has no redeeming factors. Creepy things are still creepy, and the mannequin spider is something that got stuck in my head for years after.

With the movies being clearly on the bad and the ugly side, one would ask: what’s the deal? Why are you even writing about it when you clearly didn’t enjoy it?

There are two reasons behind that, and both are answers to the titular question.

The first Silent Hill, while somehow managing to meet two extremes – dumbing things down and extremely obfuscating the plot in the process – showed that you can get a decent, atmospheric adaptation of a video game that will work, especially for those who never played the game (one of these people being myself – it actually was what made me curious about the franchise in the first place). It wasn’t too bad, it just suffered from the overly ambitious attitude and arrogance of the screenwriter. Additionally, the transformation scenes with walls being torn away actually even made it through to future games, so something clearly must have been done right.

Regrettably, Revelations doesn’t have as many redeeming qualities as its predecessor, but it made the title being spoken about and compared to the source material. And this is enough publicity for a genre that doesn’t easily attract newcomers.

So – dear reader – should you watch Silent Hill and its sequel this Halloween? The short answer is: yes, give it a chance and have no expectations.

The long answer is: do but remember that there are other, better movies filling this niche – if you seek body horror, go for Hellraiser (the fifth instalment even touches on redemption themes). If you’re a fan of horrors spanning from insanity – Jacob’s Ladder is a gem I could not recommend enough. But that’s a subject for a different story.