Archives in the Movies: Silent Hill 2006

So....a new Silent Hill movie came out recently. I've not seen it but according to reviews from people I trust, it's not great. I'm not shocked by this sentiment because it seems like every adaptation of the Silent Hill video games into films misses the mark. If I were to venture a guess as to the reasons why, it ultimately boils down to a general misunderstanding of the themes and purpose of Silent Hill within each narrative.

And I get it, adapting a game that takes several hours to complete can be difficult, especially with a game series that deals with a lot of heavy issues dressed up in horror elements. But in the year of our Beyonce 2026, there's gotta be at least one writer capable of using Pyramid Head in the way in which he was intended.

Whatever, the warning signs were there from the beginning when the first Silent Hill movie came out in 2006. Loosely adapted from the first Silent Hill video game, with elements borrowed from the second and third games, the movie focuses on Rose DaSilva (Radha Mitchell) who takes her adopted daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) to Silent Hill, West Virginia in the hopes of understanding Sharon's sleepwalking and the fearful way in which she calls out the town's name during her episodes. And let me tell you, this movie's got everything: witches, doomsday cults, sexual assault, misogyny, and Sean Bean in a rare role where he doesn't die.

There's also an archives because as with keeping with the tropes of a horror movie, research must be conducted even if it contributes very little to the overall narrative. But how else are they gonna show Sharon's true connection to Silent Hill unless there are conveniently placed old photographs on a pile of fire damaged boxes? Go on, tell me. I'll wait.

Anyway, after Rose decides to essentially kidnap her daughter to drive to the spooky town covered in fog and ash, her husband, Chris (Sean Bean), goes after her and involves the police because of course he does. He primarily interacts with Detective Gucci (Kim Coates), yes that's the character's name, who tries to discourage Chris from pursuing his wife and daughter once they enter the town and find it dilapidated and abandoned. Determined to find out just what the hell is going on, Chris decides the best course of action is to break into the archives and look through records related to Silent Hill.

For some context, within the film's narrative, Silent Hill was an old coal mining town that experienced an explosion along a coal seam in the 1970s that made the place practically uninhabitable. Any records salvaged were transferred to the nearby city of Brahams, which is where Chris breaks in and starts rooting through the damaged boxes.

Ah, yes, look that that mess of fire and water damaged records in all their glory. I'm genuinely surprised anything survived, but then we wouldn't have old timey files for Chris to dig through. I'm curious as to what the arrangement between Silent Hill and Brahams was in terms of storage and preservation because it looks like Brahams really dropped the ball. Then again, if there's no one left in Silent Hill, then there isn't exactly any urgency to do anything with the records in the present. Plus, I don't know what the archivist's work load is, so maybe this is just the backlog. Who knows? The movie isn't concerned with that. The movie just wants Sean Bean to do a crime, look through some records, and find a photo of his daughter taken in the 1970s.

To the movie's credit, the labels on the boxes and the descriptions on the photos look pretty good as far as aping archival materials. Once Sean Bean takes a moment to be understandably confused about the photograph, he's quickly arrested by Detective Gucci. Thus ends the use of the archives and my interest in the rest of the film.

If you want to see a good film adaptation of a video game, I highly recommend Iron Lung from Mark Fischbach, aka Markiplier.