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A Taste of Silent Hill: Downpour’s Soundtrack, Final Word On Multiplayer
Longtime series composer Akira Yamaoka left Konami to work on the long anticipated action/horror game Shadows of the Damned. His departure left the future of the series a little cloudy since Yamaoka’s had a powerful influence on the game’s atmosphere since the first game. I was worried until news came out that Dexter composer Dan Licht was going to be working on the music for the upcoming game. Below you’ll find a sample of what he’s been working on, and while it’s decidedly different from what we’re used to, I’m thinking it’s still very Silent Hill.
So that’s the good news, would you like some more? Well, it’s either good or bad depending on how you look at it. I’m a glass half-full kind of guy so I see the confirmation of no multiplayer in Downpour as a good thing. After the jump you’ll find out why. From Brian Gomez, Silent Hill: Downpour’s Design Director: “[Multiplayer] was something that they looked at very early in the game, then just didn’t think we could do it justice yet.” I can think of too many occasions where some sort of multiplayer component has been thrown into a game despite it not being finished. Games like Condemned: Criminal Origins have what could’ve potentially been an interesting online mode but it’s balance issues and poor level design kept people from staying interested in it for very long.
Than on the other side you have a game like Dead Space 2, where the multiplayer is incredibly well done, fun, polished and obviously something they spent a great deal of time on. I’d rather they didn’t waste time and money on a half-assed multiplayer offering and focus on making the single-player the best it can be, but that’s just me.
Then we have cooperative play as an option, and that’s covered by Marek Berka, the game’s Level Designer. “We were thinking with Konami, of course, do some cooperative experiences, but obviously it had its own problems like isolation, atmosphere, working for this type of horror game. We basically tried to do something that was two players playing in the environment, but not in the same place, so they could have had a part where they were playing with each other, but split up, either by events, or their own decisions.” I could use Resident Evil 5 as a superb example of cooperative play taking away any possible terror one might feel while playing a horror game but I don’t feel I need to.
For a long time I’ve been worried about Silent Hill since the franchise has fallen into disarray since the third game, but with every bit of news that comes out regarding Downpour I feel a little more hope for the series. Let’s hope it’s the breath of fresh air the series so desperately needs.
Let’s start with the good news. Lockbox looks far better than its misleading marketing materials suggest, a supernatural horror movie so darkly lit and color graded that you’ll have to squint your way through jump scares. It’s also anchored by reliable genre performers. That’s also about where the good news ends with this rote adaptation of Knifepoint Horror Podcast story “Winthrop.”
The empathetic Carla Gugino gives her all as Ellen, a saint of a woman with boundless patience who takes on life’s hard luck with a kind smile. After giving up her career as a fashion designer to become caretaker for a dying mother, she’s then forced to reinvent herself once more when her caretaker role ends. That catches us up to the events of Lockbox, where Ellen is asked to take in a cousin she hasn’t seen in quite some time who’s dealing with severe PTSD.
Just as Ellen finally establishes a real connection with Winthrop (Lou Taylor Pucci), it’s interrupted by the arrival of peculiar neighbor Vahna (Katharine Isabelle), who spells clear trouble. When Vahna shows up dead, it sets in motion a supernatural battle of possession.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
Director Daniel Stamm (The Last Exorcism, Prey for the Devil) and screenwriter Justin Yoffe approach Lockbox in the broadest of brushstrokes, dooming it from the start with clunky storytelling and woefully underdeveloped themes of heady topics like PTSD. Winthrop is a character that comes loaded with emotional baggage and trauma that’s piled on throughout his tragic life, but much like its title, his interiority and history are treated like a tightly guarded secret meant to prolong the supernatural mystery.
The problem here, though, is that Lockbox is too sparse to sustain mystery at all, and it instead robs Winthrop of characterization. It winds up trapping the talented Pucci without anywhere to go, toggling between wounded animal and mentally disoriented.
From there, Lockbox bounds through plot developments without any sense of stakes or purpose, peppered by a smattering of haphazard paint-by-numbers jump scares. The only unwavering constant is Ellen’s resolute faith, and Stamm seems to leave it entirely to Gugino to guide confused audiences through this inconsequential story right up until its supernatural climax.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
To give more credit, Lockbox at least injects an unconventional exorcism here; just don’t expect much in the way of explanation. When the film finally reveals the meaning behind its title, it dangles a fascinating carrot it has zero interest in delivering. More than a severe lack of fleshing out its characters beyond plot drivers or devices, this faith-based flick also seems terrified to offer any worldbuilding whatsoever.
Yoffe’s script stretches the short story beyond its means instead of fleshing it out, and Stamm fills out the gaps with cheap CGI scares and overwrought performances; Isabelle’s Vahna is beyond cartoonish in her villainy. It’s also pretty nonsensical, treating only Ellen’s faith with the utmost sincerity and largely squandering its typically reliable talent. So much so that the final imagery, pure sunkissed saccharine sentimentality, leaves you with the feeling that this horror movie might be better suited as an entry in Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Lockbox releases in select theaters on July 3, 2026.
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