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In Defense Of ‘Silent Hill’ (2006)

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Video game adaptations. You either love them, or you hate them. I’ve found myself on both sides, though I usually find myself siding with the latter. The reason for this is while there have been a few that have genuinely tried to be faithful to their source material, they’re lost in a sea of lazily crafted cash-grabs from people who aren’t willing to invest more than a modicum of effort into them.

These half-assed movies ignore the fact that gamers are an incredibly passionate bunch. Like some sort of geeky hive mind, we’ve spent years amassing our knowledge, holding week-long celebrations, and building insanely detailed wikis that serve as virtual shrines to the things we love. We could use this hive mind mentality for evil, but we don’t.

Because there’s a good chance we know considerably more about these worlds than the folks adapting them, we can tell when the filmmakers haven’t even played the game they’re trying to turn into a movie. We can also tell when they have played them.

It’s alarming how rare that is. Turning a game into a movie without playing the game is like deciding to adapt The Lord of the Rings when your knowledge is limited to the six minutes you spent watching the 1978 animated flick. Don’t do that. Seriously, don’t. As fervent as gamers can sometimes get, the communities that surround Tolkien’s works are exponentially more intense.

They won’t hesitate to cut you, and they’ll do it with a genuine replica of a Greenleaf knife, probably while yelling in Elvish.

There’s really only a handful of video game franchises that have communities like that, and one of them is Silent Hill. This series has had 15 years to make us love it. For people like me, who have been playing these games since the first released in 1999, that love is unconditional. The first three games guaranteed its status as one of gaming’s greats early on.

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Christophe Gans is a fan of Silent Hill, and it shows. Before he was able to direct the adaptation, Gans hounded Konami for five years before he was given the film rights, even going so far as to send them an audition tape to explain his love for the series.

There’s a number of reasons why I consider this film to be the most successful of Hollywood’s many attempts at bringing a video game to the silver screen, but among them, keeping Konami Japan and Team Silent — the team behind the first four games — involved with its production the whole way through is what kept it from becoming just another video game movie.

With a fan in the director’s chair and consistent input from the developer, Silent Hill was able to retain much of what made the games so memorable. Akira Yamaoka’s work on the games’ soundtracks is iconic, so pulling a selection of tracks from the early games was smart. That move went a long way in making the film feel like it was an extension of the games.

You don’t need to spend any significant amount of time with the games to be familiar with their very distinct atmosphere. Silent Hill has a very unique aesthetic. The world is opaque and dreamlike, it feels like a living thing. It shifts and changes based on your darkest fears, secrets and sins. It’s a very personal nightmare.

It’s not surprising that some of this was lost in translation. It makes sense that Gans and Co. would want to use familiar creatures from the series, like Pyramid Head and the Nurses — originally manifestations of James Sunderland’s psyche — rather than try and come up with something new. Revelations would later take a stab at being original, and we all saw how that turned out.

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Clive Barker called. He wanted me to tell you you’re bad at this.

The film’s cast of monsters serve as a sort of highlight reel. Fan favorites like the Grey Children, Bobble Head Nurses, Lying Figure and Pyramid Head make their necessary appearances, and while I would’ve liked to see them tied to Rose, seeing them realized outside of the games with such an impressive attention to detail made up for that unrealized narrative potential.

That’s not to say the movie didn’t try anything new. That old-timey flashback bit near the end was beautiful and did a fantastic job of cleaning up the near-incoherent mess that was the film’s story.

We may have reached a point where there’s a dozen awful video game movies for every successful — relatively speaking — attempt, but it’s films like Silent Hill that keep me from developing an entirely pessimistic view of the popular trend. It’s far from perfect, but I believe Gans and Friends have come the closest to bringing us a decent adaptation.

How about you? Feel free to share your thoughts on this movie, or even video game adaptations in general, in the comments!

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YTSub

Gamer, writer, terrible dancer, longtime toast enthusiast. Legend has it Adam was born with a controller in one hand and the Kraken's left eye in the other. Legends are often wrong.

Editorials

‘Leprechaun Returns’ – The Charm of the Franchise’s Legacy Sequel

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leprechaun returns

The erratic Leprechaun franchise is not known for sticking with a single concept for too long. The namesake (originally played by Warwick Davis) has gone to L.A., Las Vegas, space, and the ‘hood (not once but twice). And after an eleven-year holiday since the Davis era ended, the character received a drastic makeover in a now-unmentionable reboot. The critical failure of said film would have implied it was time to pack away the green top hat and shillelagh, and say goodbye to the nefarious imp. Instead, the Leprechaun series tried its luck again.

The general consensus for the Leprechaun films was never positive, and the darker yet blander Leprechaun: Origins certainly did not sway opinions. Just because the 2014 installment took itself seriously did not mean viewers would. After all, creator Mark Jones conceived a gruesome horror-comedy back in the early nineties, and that format is what was expected of any future ventures. So as horror legacy sequels (“legacyquels”) became more common in the 2010s, Leprechaun Returns followed suit while also going back to what made the ‘93 film work. This eighth entry echoed Halloween (2018) by ignoring all the previous sequels as well as being a direct continuation of the original. Even ardent fans can surely understand the decision to wipe the slate clean, so to speak.

Leprechaun Returns “continued the [franchise’s] trend of not being consistent by deciding to be consistent.” The retconning of Steven Kostanski and Suzanne Keilly’s film was met with little to no pushback from the fandom, who had already become accustomed to seeing something new and different with every chapter. Only now the “new and different” was familiar. With the severe route of Origins a mere speck in the rearview mirror, director Kotanski implemented a “back to basics” approach that garnered better reception than Zach Lipovsky’s own undertaking. The one-two punch of preposterous humor and grisly horror was in full force again.

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Pictured: Linden Porco as The Leprechaun in Leprechaun Returns.

With Warwick Davis sitting this film out — his own choice — there was the foremost challenge of finding his replacement. Returns found Davis’ successor in Linden Porco, who admirably filled those blood-stained, buckled shoes. And what would a legacy sequel be without a returning character? Jennifer Aniston obviously did not reprise her final girl role of Tory Redding. So, the film did the next best thing and fetched another of Lubdan’s past victims: Ozzie, the likable oaf played by Mark Holton. Returns also created an extension of Tory’s character by giving her a teenage daughter, Lila (Taylor Spreitler).

It has been twenty-five years since the events of the ‘93 film. The incident is unknown to all but its survivors. Interested in her late mother’s history there in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, Lila transferred to the local university and pledged a sorority — really the only one on campus — whose few members now reside in Tory Redding’s old home. The farmhouse-turned-sorority-house is still a work in progress; Lila’s fellow Alpha Epsilon sisters were in the midst of renovating the place when a ghost of the past found its way into the present.

The Psycho Goreman and The Void director’s penchant for visceral special effects is noted early on as the Leprechaun tears not only into the modern age, but also through poor Ozzie’s abdomen. The portal from 1993 to 2018 is soaked with blood and guts as the Leprechaun forces his way into the story. Davis’ iconic depiction of the wee antagonist is missed, however, Linden Porco is not simply keeping the seat warm in case his predecessor ever resumes the part. His enthusiastic performance is accentuated by a rotten-looking mug that adds to his innate menace.

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Pictured: Taylor Spreitler, Pepi Sonuga, and Sai Bennett as Lila, Katie and Rose in Leprechaun Returns.

The obligatory fodder is mostly young this time around. Apart from one luckless postman and Ozzie — the premature passing of the latter character removed the chance of caring about anyone in the film — the Leprechaun’s potential prey are all college aged. Lila is this story’s token trauma kid with caregiver baggage; her mother thought “monsters were always trying to get her.” Lila’s habit of mentioning Tory’s mental health problem does not make a good first impression with the resident mean girl and apparent alcoholic of the sorority, Meredith (Emily Reid). Then there are the nicer but no less cursorily written of the Alpha Epsilon gals: eco-conscious and ex-obsessive Katie (Pepi Sonuga), and uptight overachiever Rose (Sai Bennett). Rounding out the main cast are a pair of destined-to-die bros (Oliver Llewellyn Jenkins, Ben McGregor). Lila and her peers range from disposable to plain irritating, so rooting for any one of them is next to impossible. Even so, their overstated personalities make their inevitable fates more satisfying.

Where Returns excels is its death sequences. Unlike Jones’ film, this one is not afraid of killing off members of the main cast. Lila, admittedly, wears too much plot armor, yet with her mother’s spirit looming over her and the whole story — comedian Heather McDonald put her bang-on Aniston impersonation to good use as well as provided a surprisingly emotional moment in the film — her immunity can be overlooked. Still, the other characters’ brutal demises make up for Lila’s imperviousness. The Leprechaun’s killer set-pieces also happen to demonstrate the time period, seeing as he uses solar panels and a drone in several supporting characters’ executions. A premortem selfie and the antagonist’s snarky mention of global warming additionally add to this film’s particular timestamp.

Critics were quick to say Leprechaun Returns did not break new ground. Sure, there is no one jetting off to space, or the wacky notion of Lubdan becoming a record producer. This reset, however, is still quite charming and entertaining despite its lack of risk-taking. And with yet another reboot in the works, who knows where the most wicked Leprechaun ever to exist will end up next.


Horror contemplates in great detail how young people handle inordinate situations and all of life’s unexpected challenges. While the genre forces characters of every age to face their fears, it is especially interested in how youths might fare in life-or-death scenarios.

The column Young Blood is dedicated to horror stories for and about teenagers, as well as other young folks on the brink of terror.

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Pictured: Linden Porco as The Leprechaun in Leprechaun Returns.

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