Silent Hills are Alive with the Smells of Witches

Well, I saw the number one film in the country today. Horror is back so they say. Film makers are having such are hard time figuring out how to make a good movie, I guess a tried and true concept seems safe. To my surprise... how could I forget for one second just about every film that has come out in the last two years has been based on a comic book, a super hero, or a video game. I hate them all, simply because it does not work to morph a video game into what is supposed to be a movie. Don't get me wrong. Renderman used by the right hands and minds can create an entertaining and somewhat artistic product. Just about every "blockbuster" film has used this Apple software since its inception by whomother than the man himself, Steve Jobs. What is the pitfall? It should seem obvious. A film is not a video game. I film in the historical perspective used to be "live" actors filmed and shown on screen in a big theater. Renderman allowed the high tech. graphics of computer games to fuse with filmography. It it meant cutting off Lt. Dan's legs in Forrest gump without a major workload of special effects, so be it. But.... given the dinosaur fight in King Kong. That's enough right there to kill the ill perceived juxtaposition. Doesn't work, fellas. Just stop doing it. Man, who thought the audience would yearn to watch real actors try to carry out the moves. Choreography from the days gone by of Hollywood. Geroge Lucas had a little blurb on his site showing how a scene was filmed in "digital." "It makes it so easy to get the shot!" the guy exclaims. A little human action and 60% of the rest is done with the computer. Looks like shite. Feels like shite. Smells like shite. Should try to use it in a $.25 video games. I am saving my eight bucks to buy something else.
Anywho, all the reviews were the same and fairly uninformed. If you don't know by now, this film is about the same league as Mulholland Drive. It has epic undertones, and the viewer has to think and interpret what is happening on screen. Most of it seems to based in religious symbolism. The burning of witches in Old Salem hints at a theme. Good verses evil must be the underlying idea. On a small scale, one bit of dialog not mentioned in any of the reviews was, they started their own darkness. The fires they used to burn any thing they were afraid of started the hell that exists now. Mistrusting your fellow citizens and accusing them of the likes of witchery in itself is a breach of Christiandom. I think most of that is apparent in the finale of Silent Hill. The witch burners were eventually wiped out by what? Well, a little girl whose mother has been seeking refuge in the surreal habitat of the smouldering streets of Silent Hill, West Virginia. She said her daughter had been taken from her, evidently by the coal fires that were somehow ignited underneath the town long ago. The fumes and heat killed most of the town and must have burned her pretty good. She was an angry little girl with an alter ego, maybe Satan? Say if God seems to give you the shaft over and over and you get tired of it, you lose your faith. Faith was the thing that "Ye Old Borg" kept bibbling about through her part of the movie. "Your faith is the only thing that can save you from the demon, the darkness." Okay, God is sanctuary against the devil. Good enough IF God is what she meant. We as an audience don't really know that. They place they seek refuge from "the demon" looks like a church, but the simple cross we all know is artistically embellished somewhat. The little girl that could be the twin sister of the diety drew this on her pictures drawing her mother to believe there was something amiss with her upbringing. Well, seems these witch burners dropped her off at an orphanage to save her from the darkness of their own. She was adopted, but seems the witch burners wanted her back in the end. I don't really get all that connection. There is the diety that comes around at the end, a little girl, burned, and somehow empowered to kill the witchburners. Is this an angel? It doesn't seem to be God. Since we have multiple glimpses at a roadside sign that says, "We will judge angels, and Saints will judge men," this must be an angel. Angels can be good and evil. The witch burners seem to think they are going to prevent the apocholypse, but the mom looking for her lost daughter tells queen borg witch it never happened, and she was not the gilty party hiding in guilt and shame. Not before they burned her highway patrolwoman friend that saved her ass from the demon's triangular head and massive door piercing blade.
Anyhow, that's my take on some of it. It should be interesting to hear any commentary other than the inane bibble Ebert wrote. Give it a try. Try to figure it out. It is a lot more fun that way that saying, "It isn't as fun as the game."