Caltrops - Peter Molyneux's The Movies





	[quote name="Fullofkittens"]Reasoning: the little girl wasn't that horrible when she was Alessa. She was actually somewhat believable when she was evil. The problem was, the director didn't take the time to say "Sharon is <i>innocent</i>, not retarded." Which he should have done. The bit with the pictures "WHO DID THAT MOMMY IT SCARES ME" - holy shit. That was way more horrifying than the janitor. It's so terrible that I feel like a fight-or-flight reaction, my organs screaming for me to turn this shit off. Let's talk about! <u><b>The Problems with The Silent Hill Movie:</b></u> 1. <b>It's an amusement park ride.</b> It very quickly becomes apparent that there's no threat to Rose. The first scene with a monster in it - the fire children scene - ends with Rose giving up and laying down while these really great looking ash children descend upon her. But: at the last moment the hellworld goes away and the kids evaporate. Rose didn't really do anything to protect herself besides run ten feet and fall down. This happens again two more times the next time the alarm sounds: the gas mask guys run away because the alarm sounds, and then Pyramid Head bails out when the alarm time ends. This pattern of "here's something scary: look a it for a minute, it can't actually hurt you" continues to the end. There are cool monsters but they clearly don't present a threat to any good characters. Because of this, basically what we're presented with is a <i>Mortal Kombat</i>-esque parade of videogame enemies being paraded across the screen, like a cinematic curtain call. I understand that a sense of isolation is central to the game, but usually horror movies handle this by creating a sympathetic character that gets killed toward the beginning. <i>Scream</i> and <i>The Ring</i> both have the same feature: a pretty girl that can hold down one end of a conversation gets munched in the very first scene. That way we know that characters we like can get killed in the movie. 2. <b><u>The script sucks shit.</b></u> Yes, it's a videogame movie. It's also an <i>awesome concept</i>. A town that's covered in white ash because of smoldering fires underground: awesome. A klaxon goes off, and the world turns to Hell for ten minutes, and then back again: awesome. If the script had had any nonshitsuckage in it at all, the characters could have talked through this like the interesting mystery that it could be. What is Pyramid Head? Why does the town turn to Hell sometimes and not other times? How do they know when it will happen? Why did the demon come to this town? Why did it separate Sharon from Alessa? All of that would have been nice to know. But since the screenwriter's writing technique is write "ROSE!" (end scene) (the next scene) "ROSE!" (end scene) (repeat) and then leave all the explanation for a 5 minute block of expository voiceover at the end, I guess I'm glad they didn't. Jesus Christ: I am not a writer of any kind, but even I know telling and not showing equals shitty writing. And as far as the dialogue is concerned, let's just point out that it's obvious the screenwriter has never heard two people speak to each other in his whole life and leave it at that. What's really sad is that the director lobbied for years to get this movie, but he never had a script that wasn't terrible. What was he doing in that 5 years? Could he have spent maybe a couple of days to come up with a decent story? I don't know why they didn't just make Silent Hill 2 : The Movie. That's got an interesting story... way more interesting than this bullshit about witchhunters. They could have had somebody rewrite script for the game and it would have been about 100x better.[/quote]