Jacob's Ladder and the Silent Hill series (with samples!)

Film brogging continues as I switch to a whole new genre after covering action and sci-fi. Today, it's horror/thriller. This will be about Jacob's Ladder and more importantly, its influence on the Silent Hill video game series. And while we're here, fuck the Silent Hill movie adaptation. What a waste.

So about the movie itself: Tim Robbins plays a Vietnam vet (Jacob) who suffers from flashbacks and starts to believe that demons are following him. Perhaps the plot sounds a little generic, but one strength is that the focus is on Jacob's slipping grip on reality, rather than the demons themselves. So the scares come from a sense of claustrophobia and normal environments increasingly becoming demented. Overall, it wasn't completely bad, but it felt a little sloppy. They tried slapping in a Vietnam conspiracy ("I KNEW it." Yeah. That was a real line of dialogue.) and the blatant deus ex machina is laughable and does not satisfyingly resolve the movie.

Not all was lost, though. This clip (with Silent Hill music added for a MUCH better effect) shows the best scene of Jacob's Ladder, and it's a glorious 3.5 minutes of pant-shitting terror. SH owes it to Jacob's Ladder for introducing the "shaky head" effect and hellish hospital ambiance, both of which are in here. Take the dive:



Which takes us to the Silent Hill games themselves. Some people swear by them, claiming that they're some of the best horror games ever made. To whom I say, probably not. The controls are pretty effing bad, the camera swings all over the place, and the stories can be incoherent mindfucks (though that's part of the charm). However, the games do have 2 things going for them: the atmosphere and the sound.

This is a different kind of horror; it's not surprise!-zombies-mothafucka, but more like do-you-really-wanna-keep-walking-that-way. Whenever an enemy gets close, your pocket radio emits more static until you're looking for the thing just so that it can be quiet again. The city areas are usually covered in fog, so wherever you go, you feel a little more trapped. If you choose to run, the music--if you can even call it music--builds up and you feel more and more vulnerable as you get the sense that something might be sneaking up on you. If you choose to take it slow and fight, you spend a longer time in a place you really don't want to be in.

Enough talk, here's clips from Silent Hill 2 and 3. Remember, it's all about the sound and getting plunged into the visuals.


Goddamn.