The love of Christophe Gans for the Silent Hill video game series is well known: Legend has it that the French director managed to secure the rights for the first film by sending Konami a passionate video message to the producer. Twenty years after the original film, what we find at the cinema since January 22 is a real Return to Silent Hill, by name and fact.
Return to Silent Hill: alla ricerca di Mary
The painter James is still tormented by the end of the relationship with Mary, a soul mate met almost by chance. When he receives a mysterious request for help from the beloved who begged him to join him, James immediately heads to Silent Hill, where the two shared their lives together. The town on the lake is however very different from how it remembered: apparently deserted, submerged by a constant rain of ash and populated by a chilling kaleidoscope of monstrous creatures. James will have to survive long enough to dissolve all the knots between a disturbing past and a nightmare present and discover the truth about where to find Mary.
Lost in adaptation
The most devoted to the series among you probably recognized the plot of Silent Hill 2, perhaps the most famous title set in the city of ashes. Films and videogames are strongly separated media, with distinct approaches to narrative and different emotional levers that can use to involve the viewer. The structure that James sees arrive in a location, meet a frightening creature, elude it and discover a piece of plot that sends it to a new location where repeating the loop works in the game, but less in a movie. Paradoxically the most interesting part of the plot are the flashbacks that tell the life of James and Mary in a Silent Hill out of the nightmare but absolutely disturbing, which is the only part of completely new movies, which I would gladly watch 90 minutes.
Una questione di nuance
Return to Silent Hill just wants to capitalize on the most iconic images and creatures of his subject. Its duration however is too compressed compared to the experience-videogame, and the result is a bit like a picturesque but seamless kaleidoscope. Even moments that in the original material touch extremely delicate themes are touched only en passant, and even the finish is slightly altered in a way that however completely changes its emotional meaning. Surely the imaginary has solid foundations, and if you are completely new to the universe of Silent Hill I don’t feel like I don’t recommend it entirely. Take it though with the pliers: not as an exhaustive example but as an appetizer, a door for the nightmare.
Il cast
Jeremy Irvine plays James Sunderland, a painter tormented by the memory of his beloved. Hannah Emily Anderson plays Mary Crane, whose relationship with James has stopped for mysterious reasons, but also the mysterious Maria. Eve Templeton is Laura, a mysterious little girl James meets during his pilgrimage to Silent Hill, while Nicola Alexis plays James’ psychiatrist. Finally, Robert Strange dresses the iconic and terrifying cloths of Pyramid Head.
L’articolo Return to Silent Hill: a nightmare door – The review comes from Dituttounpop.it.
