5. Silent Hill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5mT5LhbRJw I'm not much of a horror movie or game fan due to being a completely and utter pansy, but I still managed to play through 4 of the games and watch the first film; albeit through my fingers and in broad daylight. The story of the film was more closely linked to the first game, though there were quite a few fingers that had me saying to myself "hang on, that's not right." I know we need to give the film's writers some leeway as not everything from the game can be replicated in movie fashion, but there were a few points that stand out like a snail at a drag race. The first thing I noticed was that our good old friend Pyramid Head was making an appearance. I know he's an iconic figure in the series and is very well-known by the general public, but he didn't appear until the second game and re-naming him the Red Pyramid was just a cheap shot. I know the writers wanted to include him as he's an iconic villain in the series, but just call him Pyramid Head and accept the flak you'll get from the die-hard fans. Pyramid head had a very deformed body in the game and was rather skinny - I doubt he had the time to hit the weights in between his mindless slaughter. The second glaring error is how we were introduced to the characters and the story in the film. At the beginning of the story we are told that Rose Da Silva is taking her adopted daughter Sharon (could have sworn that the daughter's called Cheryl, right?) to a town called Silent Hill as she's been sleep-walking and calling out the town's name. As far as I remember, this isn't how the game started. Harry Mason (also known as Christopher Da Silva or Sean Bean playing a character that doesn't die for once) is taking his daughter on holiday to Silent Hill, crashes and ends up searching for her in the town rather than staying at home and letting the mother do this as shown to use by the film. As we continue watching the film, it seems we start to stray further from the plot of the game and only meet Dahlia Gillespie after the mother is rushed to the church when the siren warns everyone about the approach of darkness. In fact, whilst the mother is out there searching for her daughter and getting up to all sorts of shenanigans, the father has popped looking for them both only to find a completely deserted town that was apparently abandoned for years. Rather than continue to search, he's asked to go home when confronted by a police officer. Christoph Gans, the director. felt that the fans would have preferred something new rather than a film based directly off one of the games, but surely if this is what they were after they'd just play another horror game or watch one of the thousands of horror films out there? When I'm paying to watch a Silent Hill film, I want it to be based on Silent Hill. I won't go into any more detail as I'm sure if you're reading this you've seen the film and played the game, but the point is - although Silent Hill was an OK-ish film - there were just too many discrepancies between the film and the game to make it a true movie based on a video game.