Well, Bloober Team, you're officially off the hook. I was dragged against my will, by my partner and daughter, to see Return To Silent Hill in the theater, and now Bloober's remake of Silent Hill 2 looks like an absolutely masterful adaptation in comparison. And to be clear, I thought Bloober's Silent Hill 2 remake was good to begin with. I had some serious issues with some of Bloober's creative liberties, but the game was overall good. But after seeing Return To Silent Hill, I almost wanted to replay the remake to remind myself of what a decent adaptation of the game could be.
The problems begin right from the opening frames of the movie, with James lighting up a joint while driving a Mustang convertible. James comes off as such an unlikeable douchebag throughout the entire movie. From the way he looks, to the way he acts, to the way he dresses, to the way that the movie completely misunderstands his character by apologizing and vindicating him for everything he does, I absolutely hated James from start to finish. The expectation that writer/director Christophe Gans would have this exact misogynist mis-reading of the game was so obviously what was going to happen right from the start. But I still honestly did not expect Gans to jerk off James this hard!
And nobody at Konami -- not even executive producer Akira Yamaoka (who really needs to stop lending his name and credibility to these things) -- thought to restrain this particular impulse.
One of my criticisms of Bloober's remake was how it made James look a little bit too guilty, by explicitly emphasizing things that the original game only briefly and indirectly implied. Things like James being an alcoholic, and maybe being emotionally or physically abusive. Gans overcompensates in the exact opposite direction. Oh, James is still an alcoholic in this movie, and he's still physically and emotionally abusive. But this movie completely vindicates and apologizes for all of these traits, and makes James out to be an innocent victim, complete with a happy fairy tale ending.
© Davis Films.
James is so profoundly unlikeable in this movie,
but the movie bends over backwards to apologize for him and vindicate him.
Just awful casting, awful writing, and awful direction.
A faithful adaptation?
On the other end of the spectrum, one of my few compliments on this movie is that Mary was exceptionally well cast! Hannah Emily Anderson looks the part and sounds the part. Her face, her voice are almost perfect -- only her hair and clothes are different.
© Davis Films.
Mary is exceptionally well cast!
While I'm on the topic of compliments, I guess I can go ahead and throw out the only other couple of nice things I can say about this movie. I really liked some of the early cinematography. Several early scenes include an overhead camera that highlights James' footprints in the ash -- yes, Gans is still going with the "ash and smoke from an underground fire" angle. The footprints are a fun homage to the original game's loading screens.
And I guess I can go ahead and give the movie credit for slightly improving the design of Pyramid Head since the first movie. The design is closer to the game and leagues better than the first movie's design, but still makes stupid moaning and grunting sounds. Both this adaptation and Bloober's adaptation downplay the sexualized aspect of Pyramid Head in favor of its violent aspects. I always thought that the "rape-y" interpretation of Pyramid Head was overplayed, and so I appreciated Bloober downplaying this aspect. With the context of the rest of James' characterization in the movie, however, the removal of the sexual aspect of Pyramid Head's nature is downright offensive and disgusting.
Hrm, I thought that was supposed to be a compliment...?
One of the strengths of the first movie was its sets and atmosphere. Aside from the stupid ash and smoke thing, the first movie nailed many aspects of the series' aesthetic. Return is much more hit-or-miss in this regard. Some sets and scenes are near picture-perfect adaptations of environments from the game. The overlook where James parks his car, along with the bathroom and gated-off tunnel are as perfect as I could expect a movie to be.
Other sets look awful. Actually, they look a lot like the Otherwolds in Bloober's remake, and they're bad in the movie for a lot of the same reasons.
Wait, what is Mary's name?
But in the end, the sets, and costumes, and aesthetics mean nothing if the story isn't good. And the story is where this movie completely falls apart.
I suspect that a lot of the problems with this movie stem from attempts to shorten it to an under-2-hour runtime. The relatively short runtime of a theatrical horror movie would make it difficult to adequately incorporate Angela and Eddie's side stories, and so this movie doesn't even really try. Eddie is little more than a glorified cameo, and the major twist of the movie is that Angela, Laura, and Maria are all aspects of Mary.
© Davis Films.
© Davis Films.
Angela and Laura are both aspects of Mary.
I guess the reason for the shitty wigs and makeup is to make people so distracted by the shitty wigs and makeup, that they don't realize from the start that Angela is played by the same actress as Mary, wearing a shitty wig and makeup. That still doesn't justify James' shitty fake beard though.
I could maybe see this working if the movie had been about James being guilty of not only having killed Mary, but also having been an emotionally and sexually abusive partner. But since Gans lets James completely off the hook, this all falls apart.
For a moment, I thought the movie might pull an almost clever fake-out, such that Mary actually isn't dead. During the hospital scene, when James' therapist shows up (was she also in the cult ritual scenes?), I started to wonder if maybe Mary is alive, and James is just in denial that she left him for being an abusive drunk. After all, the movie had not yet, at this point, established that Mary was dead; only that she was "gone", and that James wouldn't find her. In hindsight, I'm kind of surprised that Gans didn't completely absolve James by making it so that he didn't kill Mary, but that the cult killed Mary. That chauvinistic interpretation might even have been better than the misogynistic one in which James does kill Mary, but is completely justified and forgiven for having done so.
© Davis Films.
Eddie is just a cameo.
You would think that cutting out 2 key characters' subplots would lead to a more streamlined plot. But it doesn't. That's because the screenplay makes the confounding decision to add a bunch of new flashbacks, and an entirely new (and absolutely stupid and pointless) subplot about Mary being a key figure in a cult.
I guess I kind of appreciate the movie attempting to tie the story more into the occult aspects of the original games, but holy shit did they execute it poorly. I honestly do not at all understand what is supposed to be going on with Mary's role in the cult. Like, what was the point of all that?! This isn't the same cult from the games, and so the motivation of "resurrecting their god" cannot be assumed, and it sure as hell isn't given as a motivation within the movie.
Does the movie ever make any attempt to explain what the heck the cult was actually trying to accomplish? Were they drinking Mary's blood? Or drinking other people's blood off of her? To what end? Are the cultists of Silent Hill vampires now? Was there a line somewhere about the ritual being intended to birth their demon god? Is that what Laura's baby doll (and maybe the Abstract Daddy) was supposed to be all about? Or are they trying to fend off the demon god, in keeping more with the first movie's plot?
Not only does Mary's cult backstory make no sense (why does she let James take her back into town if she was actively trying to run away?), but it also completely removes the tragedy, and the moral and ethical complexity, of the whole situation. It completely undoes any relatability that the game version of James might have had. Taking care of a chronically or terminally ill family member or loved one is really difficult and emotionally taxing. What James went through with Mary [in the video game] is something that real people go through all the time. Those years of emotional exhaustion and the numbness that it can eventually create, comes through in the original game, and makes James relatable. That is completely gone from the movie.
And that brings me to the Abstract Daddy itself, which does make an appearance, despite Angela having been cut as an independent character. This might very well be the worst scene in the entire movie. Coming off of Bloober's stellar adaptation of the Abstract Daddy, Christophe Gans does the monster absolutely dirty. The set looks good, but the monster itself looks awful. More importantly, I'm even more confused by this scene than I am of the blood ritual thing. Is the implication supposed to be that Mary's father was raping her before he died, in addition to poisoning her for ... reasons?
© Davis Films.
The monster design is very hit-or-miss.
And to cap off the movie's complete absolution of James, it doesn't even include the Historical Society or prison at all. There's no violent confrontation with Eddie, either. There is no implication that James might deserve this guilt and punishment. No implication that he is actually guilty. Again, perhaps this is a result of trying to cut the events of the game down to a sub-2-hour movie. It just serves to further compound all the problems with this adaptation of James.