The Occasional Solipsist

If you have been a fan of the Silent Hill series, easily the scariest videogame franchise ever made (as I am), you were expectantly awaiting the release of the Silent Hill movie, which came out a little over a month ago.

I have been eagerly anticipating this movie ever since I heard it was being made, and dirty prick that I am, I downloaded a theater recorded copy rather than wait for the DVD to come out. Which is okay, because I'll be buying the DVD when it comes out later this year anyway.

I even posted about my anticipation of this movie twice before, once last July and again this January as more details of the film began to come out.

The first thing to know about this brilliantly realized adaptation is that you will likely have to figure out what was going on after the movie has ended.

And in order to help me describe the intellectual effort that you will need to understand the movie, I'll use the story of something once said to me to demonstrate:

A few years ago a person in my life and I were discussing Chinese food places. Not being originally from this town, I had asked this person where the best place was to go and had tried out his recommendation. It stunk. The food was greasy and tasted like dogfood. Not being one to mince words, I let this person know what I thought of his recommendation, whereupon I was told to try a more generic place, as he likened what I was looking for to be 'The McDonald's of Chinese Food'. I'm pretty sure he wasn't trying to be insulting, but sometimes I'm easily offended. It felt like he was letting me know that his tastes were more refined than mine, and he was entitled to look down on me for my choices.

So why use an analogy about Chinese food to distinguish between two groups of genre movie fans?

Because there are those that like for there to be layers to their movie experience that only reveal themselves after consideration, long after the movie has ended.

And then there are those that want predictable storylines that don't require them to turn on their minds for longer than the few seconds it takes to get another beer out of the fridge. Sort of 'The McDonald's of Movie Experiences', if you will.

This movie is definitely for the former group.

For an exciting change of pace, I won't post my review of the movie, nor will I ruin it by explaining what it was really about.

But I will say that if you're a fan of either the Silent Hill videogame franchise or genre films that make you think about what is actually going on, you should go see this movie.

And if you really need it explained afterwards, there are plenty of reviewers out there that can do your thinking for you over at Yahoo Movies.

Silent Hill is by far the most faithful videogame to movie adaptation ever made, and the bulk of the people that didn't like it are people from that second camp that would have been better off skipping the movie and watching 'Pimp My Ride' instead.

Labels: gaming