Cries and Whispers

Fire Under Centralia (2 of 4), Cartographer, 2006

Eight years ago on Friday I bought Metal Gear Solid 2 which came with a bonus DVD that also included trailers of other forthcoming Konami releases. Amongst them was the E3 2001 trailer for Silent Hill 2, which was a work of art in itself.

Regrettably, I put off buying it for a long time because survival horror is not my thing (though, speaking of which, I did play halfway through the The Thing game), and it took three years since putting it on my Amazon wishlist for me to summon the courage to play it.

»»Spoilers Ahead««

When you build something up in your mind after so many years there's bound to be some disappointment. As I'd seen the trailer a thousand times, I finished the game after nine hours with the sense I had already seen all the cut scenes. In fact, having previously seen the film Session 9, I was running ahead of the story. Actually, if I remember correctly, I was led to that film when someone cited it as a comparable work on the IMDB forums.

Despite that feeling, the real meat is the depth of the story which is revealed when you realise a week after finishing the game you're still thinking about it: whether James acted out of compassion or selfishness, if Pyramid Head was malevolent or trying to help James, if Mary had been dead for three years or one week... Like it's stablemate MGS2, this is the level at which you realise a game has ascended to literary standards.

The atmosphere was everything I had hoped. I was already on-edge hesitantly walking down the path to the cemetery. The shapes in the fog and the faint sounds had me prepared for an attack that never came. Akira Yamaoka's sound production can still make me panic at the sound of metal on concrete; and I love the soundtrack, bought it imported from Japan, and keep listening to it - like Geogaddi with guitars.

Whilst I was in the middle of playing the game I was told to try the film. I'm reluctant to start criticising it, since I've never played the first game and I understand it's largely adapted from that. That said, I would have liked it a lot more had it been an all-Japanese production. The tension of the games was being afraid to go on, which doesn't transfer to the passive act of watching a film. J-horror is about building psychological fear but the film came across as a disjointed American remake of a Japanese classic (yes, I know the film was a joint US-French-Canadian-Japanese production). To me, the tone of Kairo would have been more suited to the themes of Silent Hill, especially considering the ending which seems to come out of nowhere. The town's cult could have been the modern horror reinterpretation of The Crucible, but the script and acting weren't strong enough to carry it. I'm not saying it didn't look good, though.

I gave the film Silent Hill 6/10 (slightly above average), and gave the game Silent Hill 2 9/10 (great). I try not to get carried-away and award perfect scores, though I may raise it on replay, which I'm strongly compelled to do.

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