Silent Sentinel Scandal

Silent Hill
The Sentinel
Notes on a Scandal

Having now crossed these three films off my "to see" list, I will attempt to review all three simultaneously.

The most enjoyable of the three was definitely the last. Great acting from Judi and Cate, which is more than can be said for Eva Longoria in The Sentinel. Who cast her??!?!? Sure, she looks hot, but she is incredibly unbelievably unbelievable as some rookie cop hanging out with Kiefer Sutherland. Suuure. And she is OK playing ditzy depth-less roles in Housewives, but as if anyone would believe she was smart enough to be a cop. She's going out with a basketballer, for God's sake.

Judi and Cate were great, but as a teacher, and as someone who has a close teacher friend who has had very-inappropriate crushes and fantasies about sixteen-year-old boys, it all struck a little too close to home. Poor Barbara: I'm sure there are people out there just as lonely and manipulative and desperate as her (and Judi Dench's portrayal was magnificent) and so it was hard to totally condemn her actions. If anything, Cate's character deserved all she got, for fooling around with a child. Very naughty. Excellent film.

The suspensefulness of The Sentinel got pretty good somewhere in the middle, when no one knew whether or not Michael Douglas was really trying to assassinate the President, and he was just sleeping with Kim Basinger (now SHE is looking hot these days... and she must be, what, about late-forties, early-fifties?), but then it got weird and complicated and annoying and I was contemplating seeing what was on cable instead, but I stuck it out and it was disappointing. So.
Actually, I've never been able to look at Michael Douglas without thinking first "Kirk Douglas in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" and secondly "Falling Down", the 90s film he made about being a societally outcast, psychopathic freakshow, walking through town killing everyone: the one that I really liked.
Now to Silent Hill. This was on the "to watch" list for months. I tend to gravitate towards extremely violent, creepy, gory or horrific films, usually ones that use fast-mo camera action, have creepy big-eyed children in them, possibly dead ones, usually some sort of demonic possession and/or ghosts coming back to kill people, and tend to involve a creepy house or place where all the wack stuff happens.

Some films of the like which I have enjoyed:

• The Others


• The Ring


• The Ring 2


• The Grudge


• The Amityville Horror


• Hide and Seek


• The Hills have Eyes


• The Eye


• The Blair Witch Project


• The Haunting

The downside here is that these movies really affect me badly: I can't watch most of them (you know, the bits when you just know something creepy is going to happen, which is most of the film) and they leave me quite tense and edgy, and not happily, filmically satisfied. Usually though the tradeoff is that I was entertained, and gripped by the narrative, which usually (I said usually) is well-written and effective.

Not so for this little offering. I thought Silent Hill was fairly incomprehensible, after they get to the town and stuff starts to happen. Pyramid Head? Knife guy? Roads disappearing into the fog? What's the difference between the burnt children, and the freaky people with no faces? Are they the ones that Pyramid Head got to? And if the cute little backstory about religious cultists burning people left, right and centre is true, and if the adult Alessa is manifesting her rage in the form of a little girl, how is that little girl also the Devil? So did adult Alessa have twins? To whom? And since when does rage equal superpowers? And what was with that nurse? And how come the town exists in two parallel dimensions? And if the darkness and the bugs turn up regularly, who is operating the siren to warn everyone? God, it was like about forty films rolled into one. Keep it simple, people!

I liked the beginning and the weird armless guy rootling through the rubbish dump, and I was assuming that it would be another great gore-fest about burnt and disfigured survivors of the coal fire exacting revenge on society. Somehow the girl would be involved. That would have been fine, and much more enjoyable. But NOOOO, we had to have some convoluted lame story about Pyramid Head. It was annoying. Maybe it was more for lovers of the video game, and maybe you were supposed to know the game before seeing the movie. Whatever.