Silent Hill
Someone needs to tell Hollywood that movies based on stories of video games don't work. Why? Because the games themselves come from the stories of movies that the game creators grew up on, be they good, mediocre, or horrendous. So they're movies based on other movies. Silent Hill's convoluted "plot", using the term very loosely, is cobbled together from pieces of The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, Nightmare on Elm Street, the Salem witch trials, several old Twilight Zone episodes, and who knows what else thrown into the mix for good measure. The first hour or so has some great imagery, but by now we know oh-too-well from films like The Ring and The Grudge that cool, creepy imagery will not carry a movie w/o some kind of real story to propel us forward so that we actually give a shit about the characters involved. Silent Hill seems like it was written by adolescents (and since it's based on the video game, it may very well be) who are enthralled by comic-book panels of the grotesque. Like those "graphic novels", it's all about effect, and it's affected, the images mean nothing in and of themselves while they're presented as if they're profound and deep, but they exist only as really cool imagery. In the second-half of the film, when the filmmakers finally try to tell a story and explain what is going on, it's both convoluted and banal and any energy that the film has is drained. At the same time we're asking "What the fuck is going on?" we're also saying "Haven't I seen this all before, but much better done?"
Poseidon
Poseidon, otoh, is a very good b-movie, an action flick that might very well be a decent video game. Unlike Silent Hill, which pretends to have profundity, this flick just wants to have fun and makes no pretense about it. One of the things I liked most about it is that after the intial expository sequences in which we get to know just enough about the cliched circumstances of each of the melodramatic main characters to distinguish them from one another, that once the action starts it doesn't let up, it's relentless. There are no sentimental blah-blah dialogue sequences between the characters to bring the action to a halt, unlike the original film, which wore its schmaltz on its sleeve and became embarrassing. Yes, an unsavory character finds redemption thru heroism, one suicidal character learns life is worth fighting for, and yet another learns that love is about letting go, but these cliched epiphanies are conveyed strictly thru action, thru the deeds of the characters rather than corny words. In fact there's very little dialogue at all once the action starts. The FX are excellent, the acting is spot-on and way above your standard action-fare (the great Richard Dreyfuss in an action flick?), and we really don't know which character will die, especially since there are 2, count 'em 2, heroes. It's silly, mindless, and completely improbable, but that's exactly what it's supposed to be and it succeeds beautifully.
H
