Despite certain qualities in the realization, the first adaptation of silent Hill in the cinema was not a total successbut this film by Christophe Gans is still much better than its sequel, Silent Hill: Revelation, directed by Michael J. Bassett. And 17 years later, the French director will find the license.
Christophe Gans announced in January 2020 that he was working on film adaptations of silent Hill and Project Zero, projects obviously eagerly awaited by horror fans. And this week it’s JV who went to meet the filmmaker, who talks abouta silent Hill more modern, unrelated to the first two parts and which will be released in cinemas next year :
I’m currently working on it. There were the COVID-19 years that finally forced us to stay home. I took the opportunity to write two scripts. The script for a new Silent Hill movie that is totally independent from the two previous movies made and respects the way Silent Hill has evolved. Most of the time, these are stand-alone stories. Silent Hill is a bit like Twilight Zone, the Fourth Dimension, a place where anything and everything can happen. I worked on a new Silent Hill which is a Silent Hill of the year 2023 since the film would be released next year… in 2023… and not a Silent Hill as I imagined in 2006. It’s a Silent Hill for today’s audience while being ultra respectful of the saga. I am aware that Silent Hill is a very great video game franchise and a work of art in the noble sense of the term. The people who thought of Silent Hill put a lot of their guts into it. To know them well, they are extremely honest people. For me, it was important to design a Silent Hill in the light of the current public. It is clear that today’s horror cinema no longer resembles the horror cinema of 2006. Good for that matter. Not that 2007 horror cinema wasn’t good, but every genre is going through an evolution. I’m trying to take into account what I’ve been able to see recently, which is more original and more surprising in terms of horror films, and to see if in Silent Hill there are the seeds, or even the expression of that. Silent Hill has always been a game beyond the norm and ahead of its time.
Well, the statement doesn’t mean much, recent horror movies are eyeing more of the jump scare silly, forgetting to set up a truly creepy atmosphere to better terrify the viewer (which the first one did quite well silent Hill by the way), but fortunately there are exceptions, like Heredity by Ari Aster, The Witch by Robert Eggers or even get-out by Jordan Peele, let’s hope Christophe Gans has this kind of film in mind! The director also spoke about his other video game adaptation project for the cinema, which concerns Project Zero (Fatal Frame across the Atlantic and Zero in Japan). Whether silent Hill is supervised by Konami, Project Zero is by Koei-Tecmo, owner of the license. Again, writing the screenplay took a year of work, and the film will obviously be released after silent Hill, not before 2024 therefore. Christophe Gans thus declares:
What interests me is to reach a point of balance between video games and cinema. I’m not saying that I succeeded completely with the first part of Silent Hill, but the film was rather well received by the fans. However, these are relatively demanding. I think they understood that the film had been made by a gamer, but above all that I was trying to find the point of convergence between cinematographic and video game languages. That’s how I worked on the script for the new Silent Hill, but also for Fatal Frame, Project Zero for us Europeans. That would be the next movie. By the way, the script is ready. Over the two years of Covid, there was a year of writing for Silent Hill and another for Fatal Frame. In both cases, I wrote under the supervision of the Konami and Tecmo teams.
It will be interesting to see what direction this adaptation of Project Zero, the camera (a camera) is at the heart of the gameplay franchise, the only weapon to defend against ghosts, there is plenty to do in terms of staging to seduce moviegoers and players! If you don’t know the license, Project Zero: The Blackwater Priestess is at €49.49 on Gamesplanet.
Read also: REVIEW of Welcome to Silent Hill. Journey to the Heart of Hell, an exciting tour of the misty city
| Clint008 Writer – Tester |
