Editorials
It’s Time for the Original ‘Silent Hill’ to Receive a True Remake
Nothing stings fans of Silent Hill quite like seeing Resident Evil‘s current triumphs. It’s not necessarily out of resentment (you can love both y’know), rather it’s because they know that if handled right, Silent Hill could also be revitalized like it almost promised to be a few years back. You know, before that ill-fated Kojima Productions rebirth was ground into dust?
The crux of that pain inflicted by Resi‘s revival as a horror force is that it is indirectly due to that P.T. demo. Capcom smartly capitalized on its fate to make Resident Evil 7 what it was, and now here we sit on the 20th anniversary of Silent Hill‘s debut, with no promises on the horizon and no sign Konami is eager to do something for it.
Konami could, of course, argue it doesn’t need to do anything about it, as its still healthy and profitable despite the doomsayers declaring its death after the Kojima debacle.
Yet there is a compromise to be made if perhaps at this point, Konami gave the keys to that particular IP to someone else in order to do the most fan-pleasing (and somewhat necessary) thing. By that I mean to remake the original Silent Hill. Something a touch meatier than Shattered Memories, if we’re going to be a little more specific.
If Capcom can make a buck or two off Silent Hill‘s misfortunes, then why shouldn’t Konami take a leaf out of its book and go the remake route? Twice this has proven successful for Resident Evil, and if the reception to Resident Evil 2 is anything to go by, there’s plenty of goodwill to be earned from updating a classic. Especially one that stands to be lost to time if things carry on the way they are.
Silent Hill deserves to have its name made relevant again. A remake doesn’t have to be high budget (which has been the off-putting issue for Konami with anything, hence the remaster, annual sports games, and spinoffs made of stapled-together assets from previous work), and it’s perhaps the safest way to gamble in the series once more.
Of course, finding the right development team to essentially remake Silent Hill from the ground up isn’t the easiest task. In an ideal world, you’d let the series creators and writers back into the fold to steer the new vision in the right direction, but whose to say any of them would still want to work for Konami at this point?
As much as it would be a feel-good story to have old hands on it once more, a fresh take could also do wonders, especially for a portion of the audience that never got to experience the series in its prime. Bloober Team, with its head-spinning horrors Layers of Fear and Observer, would be a good, understandable, fit for Silent Hill, as would Penumbra and Amnesia developer Frictional Games. Frictional, in fact, could be very effective at injecting new life into Silent Hill given how smart and psychological its games tend to be.
Yes, Silent Hill as a franchise has had a major problem with being shipped around from sequel to sequel, and that’s a risk, but surely with such an intriguing and solid framework to work from, there’s just enough guidance to keep a remake feeling like it should whilst allowing for reinvention.
Is it optimistic to think Konami would budge on such a thing? Perhaps. We’ve seen where its overall gaming interests lie in recent years, but unlikely turnarounds can happen, and even Konami as a company can change.
Seeing horror gaming thrive without Silent Hill is a sad sight indeed, and it’s one I’d love to see rectified sooner rather than later. Whether Konami chooses to be involved or not remains to be seen.
Who would you have remake Silent Hill? Let us know your dream development team to revive the classic series.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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