Silent Hill 2 movie "well underway"

[jadkins555]

GameSpot is reporting (http://www.gamespot.com/news/6163606.html) that the sequel to Cristophe Gans' Silent Hill is "well underway" and that it will "correct the mistakes of the first":

Gans confirmed in an interview with French magazine DVDrama (http://tinyurl.com/y53pdl), "There will indeed be a Silent Hill 2 and it is officially ordered and is already well underway. Once he has finished his adaptation of Driver, Roger Avary will be [working on the script], helped by his friend Neil Gaiman."

Gans added that he may not have time to take on the project himself, due to his commitments on the adaptation of another video game project, Onimusha.

When asked who he would like to direct if he was unable to, Gans told DVDrama that, "If I cannot take on Silent Hill 2 myself, the director who does would need to continue in the same style as the first film. One does not want to make a Hollywood-style movie, and I think that it makes sense if the director of the sequel is European--in the best case scenario, French."

[Evil Avatar]

Why not just have Roger Avary direct? He was the talented part of the Tarantino/Avary duo.

[DevilUknow]

I belive the "europeans make better video game movies" argument is pretty much blown out of the water by one (1) Uwe Boll.

[The Continental]

The Silent Hill movie was a stinker. Yeah the visual style and monsters were freakin' top notch, but the story was a skewering of the original Silent Hill game's plot that managed to actually be more convoluted than the source material.

If they want any chance of redemption, they need to stick to a strict adaptation of the Silent Hill 2 story. Yeah, flesh it out to fill screen time, but stay true to the big plot points and the movie could please fans and the average movie goer alike.

[Heretic Machine]

I loved the first movie. Excellent presentation, and for a horror movie, it had a good story. Not only that, but it kept itself grounded heavily in the game, which is a huge plus. I have never actually heard any legitimate complaint against the movie except the exposition towards the end of the movie (big whoop, it is a horror movie).

[fitbabits]

Dear Lord and Savior

Please don't let this happen. We've already been punished enough by the first movie. I promise I'll never use your name in vain when I masturbate in future. Just please, don't let this happen.

Ta much.

[The Continental]

Dear Lord and Savior

Please don't let this happen. We've already been punished enough by the first movie. I promise I'll never use your name in vain when I masturbate in future. Just please, don't let this happen.

Ta much.

Lofty goals. I'm not sure how the big man can turn down your request after a show of devotion like that.

[Dylan McCrae]

I didn't mind the first movie, it wasn't too shabby and visually it was awesome. With Gaiman helping out on writing duties and a decent director I don't think the second will have a problem out doing the first. They should try to rope David Fincher and Chris Cunningham into it, that would be awesome.....it will never happen, but one can dream.

[bgivnin]

I loved the first movie. Excellent presentation, and for a horror movie, it had a good story. Not only that, but it kept itself grounded heavily in the game, which is a huge plus. I have never actually heard any legitimate complaint against the movie except the exposition towards the end of the movie (big whoop, it is a horror movie).

I don't know about you, but I loved the first movie as well and I think that a big part of it is that I've never played any of the Silent Hill games, so I went into the movie just going "Oh! It's based off a video game AND it's a horror movie! I'm in!". I had no expectations going into it and I came out heavily interested in the games so much so that I found the first game and I'm working on getting the others.

I think people that slammed the movie are too heavily invested in the game series, but that's just me. It's the same with all the comic book movies: Daredevil, Hulk, Xmen, Fantastic Four, etc. The fanboys love the comics so much that no movie adaptation can do it justice and that's just a bunch of crap. Try taking the movies as movies and I think you might fare better.

... at least I do. :)

[Camel]

bgivnin, I was all aboard what you were saying until you mentioned Fantastic Four.

If fanboys thought that movie was worse than I did (and I have never once read anything about the FF), then they must have REALLY hated it.

[Switcher]

You'd need to catscan if you don't think Silent Hill was one of the creepiest, most well made horror movies this year. And certainly one of, if not THE best game movies ever made.

For anyone that's seen Gans's excellent Brotherhood of the Wolf, would know that the idea of an Onimusha movie made by him = bitchin'

[mightbe]

I loved the first one. Looking forward to this one.

[figrin]

From Neil Gaiman's journal yesterday:

And the reason I'm trying to post is that when I did Internet Cafe my way online yesterday I discovered pretty much all of my FAQ messages were people asking whether I was really going to be writing the Silent Hill sequel with Roger Avary. I'm afraid that I don't think I am -- I mean, it's the first thing I've ever heard of it, and I'm sure that if they make a sequel Roger would want to write it himself. I am writing Black Hole with Roger (we're one draft in right now), and we already wrote next year's Beowulf. If I get home to find an invitation to write Silent Hill 2 with Roger is waiting for me I'll let you all know, but for right now I think it's a discredited internet rumour.

Which I don't think is a bad thing. Gaiman's an amazing storyteller, but movies are far from his strong suit.

[Switcher]

Gaiman's writing that CG Beowulf movie? Awesome.

[CptTripps]

bgivnin, I was all aboard what you were saying until you mentioned Fantastic Four.

If fanboys thought that movie was worse than I did (and I have never once read anything about the FF), then they must have REALLY hated it.

Haha, I am a semi-comic book guy and I was 100% down with what he said also. But you are right FF was just crap and I loathed it.

I never played the Silent Hill games, and although I was digging the movie to a point, they did not relay the storyline well imo. I never got a clear understanding of what was going on. CptTripps=Slow?

Just to touch on the comic\movie thing. As I said, pretty hardcore collector in my day, but I always went into the movies with such low expectations that sometimes I was pleasantly suprised. My take on some I've seen...

Conan The Barbarian, need I say more?
Spider Man 1&2 were both good flicks.
Batman with Keaton wasn't bad at all.
Batman Begins is the best comic book movie imo.
I watched the Hulk all the way through....
XMen (even though I was a huge collector) was just ok. I did like seeing how bad ass phoenix can be in full motion though.
DareDevil = doo doo
Punisher (without Dolph) was a great rental, I will even watch it again on HBO if nothing else is on :)
Doom.... hahahaha
HellBoy.... Sigh

[TheEpicOfTyler]

Can't wait. Loved the first one.

[Dr.Finger]

I thought the first Silent Hill movie was ok. They changed the story just enough to make it muddier without adding much to the overall equation (although I had no problem with Sean Bean's character/storyline). It had the potential to be a great movie, so I have (some) hope for the sequel.

[Esquilax1138]

I liked the Silent Hill movie as well, thought it was great. Though I've only played Silent hill 2 on the Xbox so I'm probably not as heavy into it as some, but I thought it did a good job of getting the points of the game across. Looking forward to a second one.

[OrangePulp]

They just need to get a good ending this time...

Spoiler: Seriously, what was up with the ending? They come back, and what, they're ghosts now? Did they die at some point? It was terrible.

Also, I found the extreme level of violence at the end somewhat revolting. The skin ripping part wasn't so bad, as you didn't really see anything other than the skin hitting the door. But the bits with the barbed wire and such... Terrible.

[Dylan McCrae]

Did you really wtach the movie dude, that part really wasn't that hard to work out. I worked it out before the movie ended.

[Grifter]

I loved the art direction in Silent Hill and the story was OK The problem was the horrible directing and for the most part atrocious acting/script. By the last 45 min. of the film it seemed that every other scene contained an eye rolling event or piece of dialog. If they can keep the overall creepiness and art design of the first while greatly improving the directing and acting I could see SH2 being really good.

[blankoboy]

Ok I must admit that I have never played Silent hill so I don't know how faithful the movie is to the game but I have to say that this movie was a complete turd of a film. It started out like it was going to be good.

When the mother and the biker cop had their first confrontation and the copper shoots that thing....I thought it was going in a Resident Evil/Dawn of the Dead direction which would have been super cool. Instead it got all wierd and ended up sucking bigtime. I thoroughly did not enjoy this film and will not waste another couple hours of my life watching the sequel.

[tombofsoldier]

Why not just have Roger Avary direct? He was the talented part of the Tarantino/Avary duo.

*Smacks Evil in the head repeatedly

I liked Kill Bill parts 1 and 2 :(

[Loganrapp]

I think it's safe to say that reviews on this movie are mixed from "great" to "shitty."

So, I think we can agree that we'd rather have Gans doing video game movies than Boll.

I mean, he admitted to mistakes!

[Jenga]

Why the fuck is Avary still doing the script? Holy shit Silent Hill was awful.

[Jenga]

You'd need to catscan if you don't think Silent Hill was one of the creepiest, most well made horror movies this year. And certainly one of, if not THE best game movies ever made.

The movie wasn't creepy or scary. Half of the audience in the movie theatre laughed at pretty much every monster scene, save for Pyramid Head and that dude in the bathroom stall. The awful dialog ruined pretty much every scene throughout the movie.


The movie is a polished turd. It's really pretty, but the plot, characters, pretty much everything else except the enviroment and monsters sucked.

[[VSK]BadCRC]

I'll be the black sheep on this thread and say that I actually liked the movie. The movie felt linear though, like it played out the way that I would expect a video game would, and truth be told, when I first saw this, I didn't know there was a Silent Hill video game, sad, I know.

But the title of the movie sounded like I'd heard it somewhere, and later realized that yes, it was based off the Silent Hill game franchise.

My only gripe with this movie was that the storyline seemed lacking. Like, I wanted to know more about the history of this town, more about the father, more about the dirty copy keeping the father away. I wanted to know so much more, so many questions I wanted answers too, and so much history I felt I was missing out on.

I guess having never played the game, even to this day, has pretty much left me unbiased when it comes to comparing the two. But I thought it had a great premise, I loved the whole idea of a coal town burning for decades, and snowing ash. And I thought they had a lot of great visuals in the story.

The only other thing that bugged me though was that the cop dies, and the little girl and her mother are in some alternate reality/hell or something. Like, did they die? Did they not die? wtf... The ending just felt hopelessly shallow and unforgiving, like, what could they possibly do after this, if anything...

[ZephidsEmbrace]

I thoroughly enjoyed the Silent Hill movie. It was gorgeous, and creepy as hell. I call bullshit on whoever said that half the audience laughed out loud (I assume, if you heard it?) at the monster scenes. Nothing in the movie made me jump, but I was still either creeped out or tense about the situation.

I've never played the games, and I was actually expecting a really cool but shitty movie. I was very impressed with it, and although not the best movie I've ever watched, it was still great fun and plenty tolerable. And I also don't think the ending sucked. It certainly wasn't great, and I was slightly confused with it for a short while, but I think it allows them to lead into a second one fairly easily.

In short, I'm psyched for the second one. Here's to hoping it's as awesome as the first, if not as good.

[Jenga]

I thoroughly enjoyed the Silent Hill movie. It was gorgeous, and creepy as hell. I call bullshit on whoever said that half the audience laughed out loud (I assume, if you heard it?)Believe me, people were actually laughing at the whole Nurse scene.

[mightbe]

Spoiler: Seriously, what was up with the ending? They come back, and what, they're ghosts now? Did they die at some point? It was terrible.
My take on it was that they were dead the moment they woke up in the "snowy ash" silent hill. Take another look at the film with that in mind and I think you'll grasp it a bit better.

[Hellstorm]

You'd need to catscan if you don't think Silent Hill was one of the creepiest, most well made horror movies this year. And certainly one of, if not THE best game movies ever made.


LOL! Best exaggeration ever.

[jakie_chon]

Shitty and still the best video game movie ever.


I liked it.

[ProfPuppet]

I liked the first SH movie, but not a great deal. Could have been done a lot better.

I thought it was funny they took out 99% of the crap monsters from SH1 (giant moth! giant lizard!) and put in the SH2 monsters. The plots of Silent Hill 2 and 4 would make good movies. Just as long as they didn't have the really slowly told monologues of 2. "My... Wife... Went to this town... It was our... special... Place."

[KamaItachi]

Silent Hill was visually quite impressive, but almost everything else was a bit of a damp squib. If the sequel was a bit smaller and personal, like the second game, instead of trying to tell the story of the town, I'd be more interested.

Pyramid head, while cool, was also wasted in that film.

[MaiXu]

Please let Terry Gilliam direct Silent Hill 2. That would be indescribably awesome.

[Gorvi]

I'll throw my hat in with the "I liked it" bunch. It wasn't a cinematic masterpiece, but it was certianly better than any other game based movie I've ever seen. I will say, though, that the last half hour is the only real problem I have with the movie, it just seemed to drag. I have no problem at all with the ending though, it totally fit the Silent Hill 'feel'.

[H.Bogard]

They'd better not fuck with the Sunderland storyline... besides that, they can rape the Mason family's story all they want. After a game like Silent Hill 3, I don't care about it anymore...

BUT KEEP THE FUCK AWAY FROM SUNDERLAND YOU BITCHES! IF YOU HOLLYWOODIZE THAT BEAUTY OF A STORY I'LL FIND YOU... J & SILENT BOB STYLE!

[Magnanimous Gnome]

Regardless of what the haters say, I firmly believe that Silent Hill is easily the best videogame-based movie to date, and one of my favorites movies of the last year, period. I loved it and can't wait for a sequel.

[mightbe]

Regardless of what the haters say, I firmly believe that Silent Hill is easily the best videogame-based movie to date, and one of my favorites movies of the last year, period. I loved it and can't wait for a sequel.
Judging by the amount of people who have stopped by this thread to comment positively on it, I'd say we're not alone.

One of my friends who's a horror movie junkie (and not much of a video game guy) thought it was great.

[Esquilax1138]

Just as long as they didn't have the really slowly told monologues of 2. "My... Wife... Went to this town... It was our... special... Place."

Think of that being said by Shatner, and it gets a whole lot better :D

[Magnanimous Gnome]

Ok I must admit that I have never played Silent hill so I don't know how faithful the movie is to the game but I have to say that this movie was a complete turd of a film. It started out like it was going to be good.

When the mother and the biker cop had their first confrontation and the copper shoots that thing....I thought it was going in a Resident Evil/Dawn of the Dead direction which would have been super cool. Instead it got all wierd and ended up sucking bigtime. I thoroughly did not enjoy this film and will not waste another couple hours of my life watching the sequel.



It's supposed to be "weird" man - it's Silent Hill. It is NOT the same as Resident Evil. Never has been, and hopefully never will be.

I personally thought the RE movie was terrible.

[Magnanimous Gnome]

Judging by the amount of people who have stopped by this thread to comment positively on it, I'd say we're not alone.

One of my friends who's a horror movie junkie (and not much of a video game guy) thought it was great.


It's good to see I'm not the only one around here with good taste! :D

[menage]

Most new horror movies suck ass so I think for a videogame adaption of a horror game SH did a good job. Horror movies tend to have no plot at all, I prefer too much plot if I had to choose.

I did think the acting was pretty horrible, ditch the actors, rewrite SH2's plot and hire another director. Chris Cunningham would be a daring move I would say. He probably wouldn't do it, and maybe it's better for me. I wouldn't sleep ever again I guess.

[Spigot]

Regardless of what the haters say, I firmly believe that Silent Hill is easily the best videogame-based movie to date, and one of my favorites movies of the last year, period. I loved it and can't wait for a sequel.
Yay! It's nice to see that we're not alone. I remember when the movie came out and how much a lot of the people here were dumping on it. I absolutely adored the movie. I didn't find the dialogue bad, given that it was a game adaptation. If I'd gone in expecting Oscar Winning Dialogue (tm) then I'd be disappointed, but I was more than happy with what I saw.

Being a huge SH fan to start with, I was tickled pink to see all of the little homages to the original game. The scene in the beginning when she walks down the corridor even had the exact same camera angles as the original game. I was actually really disappointed she didn't bump into a wheelchair with a slowly spinning wheel. Had they included that, the scene would have been mindblowingly perfect.

As for the exposition near the end, meh. I could have lived without it but given how convoluted the original game's plot was, this was perfectly acceptable to me. I could have done with the final church sequence being a bit shorter (do we need 5 minutes of the crazies saying, "BURN THE WITCH!"?) and I still think it would have been nice if they'd stayed with the game's plot with the crazies being devil worshippers instead of nutty religious folk. But it was still acceptable as it was.

If Gaiman actually DOES end up writing with Avary, that would be cool. I just watched Mirrormask again the other day and would love to see something as cool as the first SH movie with even more of a surreal twist.

I didn't mind Sean Bean's character that much, given that his presence in the film was the one part that I was really worried about going into the movie, he really represented us, as the audience, and was the mouthpiece by which we learned the history of the town and so forth. Given that we couldn't sit there and read newspaper after newspaper and note after note like we would ingame, we really needed a character like his to convey this info to at least the non-gamers, if not the audience as a whole.

Bring on more monsters and more of a creeping sense of doom and I'll be happy. Just make sure they keep the story about a bunch of normal people thrown into a very twisted and hellish world... ie. keep it different from Resident Evil, thanks.

[Sloth]

I really liked the movie. There was great tension as soon as the girl got to silent hill. The world of silent hill was well represented. If you didn't know what movie you were watching, but had played the game, you would easily recognize the town.

Honestly I think it was the best video game movie adaptation I've ever seen.

The work with Pyramid head was fantastic.

[kurr]

The fucking air-raid sirens. That's all I have to say. That was a powerful thing, right there, in the theater. I got that adrenaline rush, that "Oh shit, here it comes" rush.

[Mason]

Eh, it had its moments, but it's like someone kept changing the channel between an okay surreal/creepy movie, a pointless police procedural, and The Crucible. The direction was top-notch, but the writing had some serious issues, so SH2 switching directors but keeping the same writer is quite an ill omen.

[jadkins555]

Also, I found the extreme level of violence at the end somewhat revolting. The skin ripping part wasn't so bad, as you didn't really see anything other than the skin hitting the door. But the bits with the barbed wire and such... Terrible.

Silent Hill has always had disturbing violence. In Silent Hill 3 there is a room in (I think) the hospital where a man or woman is tied up dripping blood into a bucket. The only purpose for that is to see how much blood can be excreted.

[jadkins555]

Silent Hill was visually quite impressive, but almost everything else was a bit of a damp squib. If the sequel was a bit smaller and personal, like the second game, instead of trying to tell the story of the town, I'd be more interested.

Pyramid head, while cool, was also wasted in that film.

I agree completely. A movie about nothing but Silent Hill 2 would be great, but the awe of Pyramid Head has already passed since he was in the first one.

Among other things, I don't think the movie should have tried to explain the town so much. I think it becomes less scary the more you know about everything. I thought the part where the skinless kid approaches the mother soon after she enters the town was really scary. The part after she lights her lighter and sees the person tied to the fence.

[wezlypipz]

Finally, someone who understands how video game-based movies should be. Cheers to you my good man. cheers to you!