Tagline: We’ve been expecting you.
Silent Hill movie storyline. When young mother Rose (Radha Mitchell) — desperate to find a cure for her daughter Sharon’s bizarre illness — refuses to accept a medical recommendation of psychiatric institutionalization, she flees with Sharon and heads for Silent Hill, the town that her daughter continuously names in her sleep.
Although her husband Christopher (Sean Bean) adamantly opposes, Rose is convinced the mysterious town will hold all the answers. But as her car approaches the deserted city’s limits, a mysterious figure appears in the road, forcing Rose to swerve and crash. When she comes to, Sharon is gone, and suddenly Rose – accompanied by a determined police officer (Laurie Holden) from a nearby town — is on a desperate quest in Silent Hill to find her child.
It’s immediately clear that her destination – left alone since devastating coal fires ravaged Silent Hill — is unlike any place she’s ever been: smothered by fog, inhabited by a variety of strange, haunted beings, and periodically overcome by a living Darkness that literally transforms everything it touches. As Rose searches for her daughter, she begins to learn the history of Silent Hill – its violent, puritanical past and the origins of its accursed state — and realizes that her daughter is just part of a larger, more terrifying destiny.
Silent Hill is a 2006 dark fantasy horror film directed by Christophe Gans and written by Roger Avary, Gans, and Nicolas Boukhrief. The film is an adaptation of Konami’s video game series Silent Hill. It stars Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Laurie Holden, Deborah Kara Unger, Kim Coates, Tanya Allen, Alice Krige, and Jodelle Ferland.
The film follows Rose, who takes her adopted daughter Sharon to the town of Silent Hill, for which Sharon cries while sleepwalking. Arriving at Silent Hill, Rose is involved in a car accident and awakens to find Sharon missing; while searching for her daughter, she fights a local cult while uncovering Sharon’s connection to the town’s past.
Development of Silent Hill began in the early 2000s. After attempting to gain the film rights to Silent Hill for five years, Gans sent a video interview to them explaining his plans for adapting Silent Hill and how important the games are to him. Konami awarded him the film rights as a result. Gans and Avary began working on the script in 2004. Avary used Centralia, Pennsylvania as an inspiration for the town. Filming began in February 2005 with an estimated $50 million budget and was shot on sound sets and on location in Canada (Brantford, Ontario).
Silent Hill was released on April 21, 2006, grossing nearly $100 million worldwide. Film critics praised the film’s visuals, set designs, and atmosphere, but criticized the film for its dialogue, plot, and run-time. A sequel entitled Silent Hill: Revelation was released on October 26, 2012 to critical failure, but modest commercial success.
About the Production
For director Christophe Gans, the appeal of making the film of Silent Hill lay in its otherworldliness, its mixture of horror, sci-fi and drama elements, all the while refusing to succumb to the rules of any one genre. “This is a classic Twilight Zone story, dealing with emotions and the supernatural,” says Gans.
“The story, embedded in different dimensions and linked by the fact that everyone is suffering, rests between the tradition of Romanesque melodrama and surrealistic science fiction. What I like is that Silent Hill is a current place, but once you are caught in it, you are condemned to wander there forever. But of course, it’s absolutely mythological; not a normal story at all.” It was while on the set of Gans’ hit film Brotherhood of the Wolf, talking with Samuel Hadida, the producer of the film – and the man behind Metropolitan FilmExport and its production arm, Davis Films – that the idea of transforming the popular video game Silent Hill into a feature film developed.
Brotherhood was the pair’s second film together after Crying Freeman and they instantly latched onto the possibilities inherent in creating a gripping tale and arresting cinematic experience around the idea of a town caught between heaven and hell, trapped by a vicious secret. “Silent Hill is a step beyond what we have seen in cinema,” continues Hadida.
“The video game is extraordinarily popular because each gamer experiences something unique when they play it. This film is going to further that experience by adding dimension and mythology to an already amazing concept. I first met Christophe when I was presenting one of my films, Evil Dead at the 1982 Festival du Film Fantastique de Paris; he was there with his short film, “Silver Slime”. Throughout our years of working together, we have been waiting to make a film that would be an homage to the horror genre. Silent Hill is that homage.
Convincing the makers of the game, Konami, to give Gans and Hadida the rights to make the movie was no small task, but Hadida knew the game’s richly visual aesthetics and spooky narrative would dovetail perfectly with Gans’ encyclopedic film knowledge. “It’s a twisted story with enormous reference to the cinema of today because the Japanese creators have taken their influences from the masters of the horror genre,” says Hadida. “Christophe, having seen almost every film ever made, is the right person to reference these genres.
The competition for the rights to the game was fierce. Hadida and Gans found that they were competing against more than a few major Hollywood production companies. What made the difference, and it was the only thing that made the difference, was Christophe Gans’ vision, which he conveyed in a thirty minute on-camera statement to the game’s creator, who in turn took that to the Board of Directors at Konami. Gans took home the prize because Konami felt he was the only one who perfectly understood the essence of the game.
Yet at the same time, the difference in media was crucial to understand. “A game is a game, and a film is a film,” says Gans. “Silent Hill is about diving into a frightening world. What was important in the idea to do a movie was to bring a background story into the foreground. And we wanted to make all the characters grey and ambiguous, very multi-dimensional.” Producer Don Carmody had previously teamed with Samuel Hadida on the blockbuster Resident Evil franchise, and was immediately intrigued by what Silent Hill promised: a movie experience “intellectually interesting, stimulating, and definitely cinematic.”
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Silent Hill (2006)
Directed by: Christophe Gans
Starring: Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Laurie Holden, Deborah Kara Unger, Kim Coates, Tanya Allen, Jodelle Ferland, Alice Krige, Amanda Hiebert, Eve Crawford, Colleen Williams
Screenplay by: Roger Avary
Production Design by: Carol Spier
Cinematography by: Dan Laustsen
Film Editing by: Sébastien Prangère
Costume Design by: Wendy Partridge
Set Decoration by: Peter P. Nicolakakos
Art Direction by; Elinor Rose Galbraith, James McAteer
Music by: Jeff Danna, Akira Yamaoka
MPAA Rating: R for strong horror violence and gore, distrubing images, language.
Distributed by: Sony Tristar Pictures
Release Date: April 21, 2006
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