Silent Hill: Collector's Edition - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Silent Hill: Collector's Edition



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


​

Movie
Video game to movie adaptations are always a hard thing to get right. Video games have hours and hours of game play and cut scenes to tell a story, while a movie generally has 2 hours or less to compress everything into one cohesive story line. Kind of like a book to film adaptation, it sometimes takes some tweaking and changing of the original story to get something palatable for film audiences, and films from the 90s and early 2000s that were adapted from video games really did NOT do too well (Resident Evil and it’s sequels not withstanding). However, 2006’s Silent Hill is a stand out in the genre as it was one of the most visually creepy and faithful adaptations to date of a horror video game. The movie is a bit controversial in that “love it or hate it” category, and I fall into the former, as I really really enjoy the movie for what it is. One of the most atmospheric horror movies I’ve ever seen, with enough of the original horror survival elements of the game combined with truly creepy visuals (and an end blood bath that still disturbs me to this day).

Rose (Radha Mitchell) and Chris (Sean Bean Da Silva are struggling with their adoptive daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland, most notable for Dark Matter) who is plagued by traumatic nightmares revolving around an old mining town in West Virginian named Silent Hill. Thinking that it might be good for Sharon to face her fears, Rose takes Sharon out into the West Virginia landscape to try and find Silent Hill. After an altercation with motorcycle cop Cybil Bennett (Laurie Holden) Rose ends up crashing the car just outside of Silent Hill. Waking up in an ash colored nightmare, the frantic mother realizes her daughter is missing.

Searching for Sharon proves to be a hill in and of itself, as the world of Silent Hill is not the same as the world that she came from. The daytime is covered in white ash with no one in sight, while the night brings forth demons and monsters that should only exist in the worst of nightmares. After teaming up with Cybil (who followed Rose into this nightmare by accident) Rose begins to unravel the post apocalyptic nightmare that is Silent Hill and realizes that her own daughter may be more connected to the horrors of the town’s past than she initially realized. Now it’s it’s up to her to get her daughter back and get out alive…….if that’s even a possibility anymore.

Director Christopher Gans really sells the film in more ways than one. Gans is not your typical “tick off the check boxes” director, and he utilizes his trademark love of visual aesthetics to great aplomb her. The old Silent Hill video games were VERY atmospheric horror/survival games (that are still considered epic classics to this day) and Gans goes into overdrive, turning the world of Silent Hill into a nightmarish hellscape of nasty monsters, bloody barbed wire, and noir like creatures that are more bizarre than most horror films could dream up. Gans himself seems to be having a blast, but he does pull a few problems that were part of the games into the film. It’s a bit too long at over 2 hours, and there are some plot holes here and there. You get confused on WHO Alessa really is (is she a demon? Is she just the manifestation of a troubled girl?), and sometimes the movie feels like you’re running from one cut scene to the next (one of the curses of trying to stick religiously to a video game like Silent Hill).

The plus side is that the movie is not only well stylized, but also well acted as well. Sean Bean actually doesn’t die in a movie for once either! Radha Mitchell does well as the persistent mother and Jodelle Ferland does amazing as both Sharon and the twisted visage that Alessa puts on for Sharon. However it’s Alice Krige (most notable as the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact) who really steals the show as the dogmatic religious leader of the survivors of Silent Hill. She’s deliciously twisted and sanctimoniously demented in her beliefs. It makes that end blood batch all the most enjoyable as a horror fan (that blood bath is one of the most nasty horror scenes that I’ve seen in all my years, and remember being horribly uncomfortable when I say it 13 years ago in theaters).




Rating:

Rated R for strong horror violence and gore, disturbing images, and some language




Video:

Silent Hill was one of Sony’s VERY first Blu-rays to ever hit the market back in 2006, and like many of those discs, it was a problematic one. The master used may have been in good shape for being a brand new release, but the MPEG2 encoding on a single layer BD-25 disc left it looking very “meh” at best. Blocking was common, blacks were poor, the film was noisy, and it was generally considered a very VERY weak transfer even at the time. Now, 13 years later Scream Factory has gotten ahold of it from Sony, and while there is no mention of a remaster or new scan (Scream/Shout Factory is usually VERY vocal about doing so when a new master is struck, but for all we know Sony did a newer master behind the scenes sometime in the last 13 years) it is LEAPS and BOUNDS better than the old Sony release. This new AVC encoded BD-50 has a much higher bitrate and the more efficient AVC encoding method allows the film to really shine. The movie is a very VERY visually stylized film, with the outdoor shots of Silent Hill bathed in a white ash covering, with light shadows and a very intentionally flat look. Inside is more colorful, with hellish oranges and rust colors blending with dark steel and rotting wood. Splashes of bright red blood, or cherry red lips pop off the screen, but this is a very visually striking film using a very dark color palette to “survive”. Dark level are quite good, with only minimal black crush (the film is so dark it’s hard NOT to see some black crush if you look for it), and there’s only a few scenes that get a bit noisy. The “real world” shots naturally look the best, with bright primaries and a sort of light honey colored glow to it. Needless to say, whether you like the movie or not, the video upgrade is a huge jump from the domestic Blu-ray we’ve had for the last 13 years (although there were foreign releases which were big upgrades, but you needed to be region free to enjoy those)









Audio:

The original 2006 Sony release carried with it a 5.1 PCM uncompressed track, and Scream Factory seems to have taken the source file and recorded it in 5.1 DTS-HD MA (as well as a downmixed 2.0 DTS-HD MA track for night listening). It was a powerhouse track back 13 years ago (although cooked a bit hot) and is still a beast of a track to this day. Silent Hill’s 5.1 mix is LOUD and it’s powerful, with tons and tons of cooked in bass and a frenetic surround mix that is deliciously creepy. The screeching of metal on metal comes from all sounds, with the rustling of monster feet pattering around the sound scape. The end scene at the church is just a vicious assault, with the organ based score pounding through mixed with shrieking barbed wire strands everywhere (you have to see the movie to understand what I mean there) as well as earth crunching bass as the chaos ensues. This is just an incredible mix from beginning to end and one that will still stress your system with it’s “mere” 5.1 nature.







Extras:

Disc One

• HIGH-DEFINITION REMASTER APPROVED BY CHRISTOPHE GANS
• NEW Audio Commentary with cinematographer Dan Laustsen
• Theatrical Trailer

Disco Two
• NEW interview with director Christophe Gans
• NEW A Tale of Two Jodelles – an interview with actress Jodelle Ferland
• NEW Dance of the Pyramid – an interview with actor Roberto Campanella
• NEW interview with makeup-effects artist Paul Jones
• Path of Darkness: The Making of SILENT HILL – a six-part documentary
• The Making of SILENT HILL vintage featurette
• On set interviews and behind-the-scenes footage
• Photo Galleries – still photos and posters

Final Score: ​

Is Silent Hill a perfect video game movie? Nah, but it’s a whole lot of fun in my opinion. As I said, it’s a bit of a “love it or hate it” type of movie, and it has gained a very strong cult following over the years. One of the reasons that abysmal sequel Silent Hill: Revelation was able to be funded. The fans were clamoring for a sequel for years. Scream Factory is really to be commended for this one, as the video quality is a very large leap over the crummy Sony Release from a decade ago, and the extras are just crammed to the gills, making it a VERY worthy upgrade over the old Sony release.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Sean Bean, Radha Mitchell, Laurie Holden, Kim Coates, Alice Krige, Jodelle Ferland, Tanya Allen
Directed by: Christopher Gans
Written by: Roger Avary
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, English DTS-HD MA 2.0
Subtitles: English SDH
Studio: Scream Factory
Rated: R
Runtime: 125 minutes
Blu-Ray Release Date: July 9th, 2019

Recommendation: Great Package