transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Friends, neighbors, humans, it's me, Jeremy. I hope you've got a clear dance card this coming weekend because you have a date with Retronauts. Assuming you'll be at Midwest Gaming Classic, of course, but why wouldn't you be? Retronauts will be at the show in full force, something like it, for 2026. Not just some mealy-mouthed, we popped our heads in and took a look around before we split. No, this is a full-on takeover. Consider the following. Saturday at 10:30 a.m., our very own Diamond Feit helps kick off the event by leading a bonus stage presentation called Survival Horror Isn't Real. At noon, Brian Clarke and I will be signing books. I'll have a few copies of my most recent publications for those who need something for me to inscribe. Then at 5 p.m., the Retronauts crew in attendance of me, Diamond and Nadia will present our annual look at the 30th anniversary of the greatest RPG of all time. And finally, I'll be teaming up with Kate Willard on Sunday at 2 to talk about how the Metroidvania genre turns 40 this year, or at least Metroid andvania do. So come on out and see us. We're kind and we don't bite. Saturday and Sunday at Midwest Gaming Classic.

Speaker 2:
[01:17] This week on Retronauts, the balcony is closed on account of the missing floorboards, which were replaced with rusty chain link fencing. Hello, welcome back to Retronauts, and welcome back to this very special episode. They're all special, they're all special. They're like my children, so many. I've got hundreds of children now. And well, as with this recording, we're about to celebrate 20 years of Silent Hill, the movie. And because it's 2026, we have a brand new Silent Hill movie that's still opening in some areas. So I thought, what better way to spend a couple hours than to host our Retronauts and talk about what I'm calling the SHCU, the Silent Hill Cinematic Universe, copyright Fight Club Productions, do not steal. And obviously, first of all, I'm Diamond Feit, I'm your host. I had not stabbed or been stabbed by any children. And joining me today, first, the regular voice, I'm sure you already heard and you recognize because she's talked about Silent Hill many, many times.

Speaker 3:
[02:52] Hello, it's Jess O'Brien, AKA Voidburger. And I am being controlled by a small dog in a room somewhere with a lot of buttons.

Speaker 2:
[03:01] The dream, it's the dream. And not our first time Retronauts guest, but a first time for me Retronauts guest, please Casey.

Speaker 4:
[03:11] Hi, my name is Casey Green, also Casey G. So I sign everything lately. And I was hanging out with my friend, Eddie. We were just wandering through like West Virginia. And then he just kind of disappeared. He had a thing of pizza. We were walking home and then he disappeared into the fog. And if you've seen my friend Eddie, let me know. He owes me a pizza.

Speaker 2:
[03:39] We're all searching for Eddie. We don't know what happened to Eddie. I just hope he's okay.

Speaker 4:
[03:44] Good riddance.

Speaker 2:
[03:45] Not Eddie. But yes, we're talking about Silent Hill because of the anniversaries and because I just felt like it, let's be honest. But yeah, and also I think because in 2026, I do think Silent Hill is having a bit of a moment, I think, as a collective thing. Jess and I, of course, talked about the recent Silent Hill 2 remake, and we know there's another remake coming. I think they said it's the first game. Do they say that for sure?

Speaker 3:
[04:12] The Bloober team is, allegedly, making the first game remake, and I'm a little excited about it, actually. I'm interested.

Speaker 2:
[04:18] And it's only been a few scant months ago that Silent Hill F came out, and people seem generally positive on that one. I haven't finished it yet, I'm sorry.

Speaker 4:
[04:27] That's solid. I never got the good ending on that one, though.

Speaker 2:
[04:30] I'm told the good ending takes many, many full playthroughs, which seems daunting.

Speaker 3:
[04:36] That wasn't really for me. I acknowledge that this is incredibly good and not for me, unfortunately.

Speaker 4:
[04:43] I gotta tend to my plants in Pocahontas, sorry.

Speaker 3:
[04:45] I'm almost 40, I can't do this all day.

Speaker 2:
[04:50] But in general, I think Silent Hill is in a pretty nice place compared to where it was, say, I don't know, like just five years ago, where it was just like, what happened? What's going to happen? Remember PT? That was pretty cool, but that's gone now. So I'd say compared to that situation, Silent Hill is pretty good. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[05:09] I mean, I feel like I don't know what happened internally at Konami that made them suddenly decide like, oh, we should make good things with this IP. Maybe. Did somebody die up there? CEO area or what?

Speaker 4:
[05:24] Are their pachinko machines not going so hot?

Speaker 2:
[05:27] Honestly, honestly, I think that might be part of it, because let's be honest, in the last few years, we had a major pandemic. I'm sure the average pachinko player has got to be in their 60s right now.

Speaker 4:
[05:41] You have to go to parlors to do it.

Speaker 2:
[05:43] Exactly. Believe me, I've set foot in the places once and I'm never going back in again. It is a nightmare to go in there. Believe me, I'll take, give me the barbed wire and the rusty monsters over the pachinko parlor any day.

Speaker 3:
[05:57] It's actually less noisy in the Silent Hill other world than it is in the pachinko parlor.

Speaker 2:
[06:03] But yeah, Konami the Pachinko Games and of course, they have health clubs, which I'm sure took a major hit when the pandemic happened. They're probably doing okay now, but still. Maybe Konami looked at their usual streams of revenue. It's like, hey, this isn't making money anymore. What if we start licensing stuff out? Also, they probably looked at the fact that Resident Evil has continued to make big bucks in every medium. It's like, oh, we have a Resident Evil, I think. But let's talk about Resident Evil. But let's also talk about Resident Evil, because let's be honest, let's be honest, Silent Hill exists because Resident Evil was a pretty big deal on the original PlayStation and the sequel was an even bigger deal. So, well, people say, I think sources point to Silent Hill beginning development like late 96, so probably they started before Resident Evil 2 came out and made a crap ton of money, but it's still after Resident Evil came out, one. And so, you know, the writing was on the walls, like, hey, there is money to be made on this new PlayStation thing for games that are kind of scary and not really for kids at all with 3D graphics and English speaking actors. And the rest, we just make up. Yeah. And that's how we got Silent Hill. Let's be honest, Silent Hill 1 is a very curious creation that doesn't kind of, it comes from everywhere and yet it comes from nowhere. There's nothing quite like Silent Hill, but as we'll talk about, there's definitely some stuff in there that can be recognizable as birth from someplace. Yeah. And we certainly know that Konami as a company said, hey, this has got to appeal to Americans, make this for an American audience. Hence, you have all the English voice acting.

Speaker 3:
[07:43] Which is wonderful. Yeah, and the PlayStation can only store four seconds of audio at a time, so it's really stilted and it gives it a weird uncanny quality. It's really interesting how, because it was on the PlayStation 1, the technical limitations actually made it more interesting than the fog was a technical limitation, I believe.

Speaker 2:
[08:06] Absolutely, sure, sure. Yeah, this is draw distance. You know, they, unlike Resimdevil, Silent Hill went for the full 3D experience, which in turn restricted some aspects, but which in turn gave the game a particular flair and flavor that we're still talking about almost, almost 30 years later. You know, don't want to jump ahead too far, but we're closer to 30 than 20 at this point.

Speaker 3:
[08:30] Upsetting.

Speaker 2:
[08:34] And while I would argue that Silent Hill pretty quickly established itself separate from the other would-be resident evils out there, you know, your overbloods, your Martian gothics, I think, I think again, if you look at Silent Hill, you can see bits and pieces of things that were borrowed to make Silent Hill what it is, especially foreign movies because they were targeting American audience. And we have so much recognition of this when it comes to a Japanese studio and they're making something and the executives say, hey, make this for Americans. The first thing they do is they rent movies or TV shows and like, okay, I'm looking at America on this screen. Now let's make America on this screen. And I'm typing. And, you know, that has produced some fantastic art over the years. You know, some of it, some of it a little strange, but so much of it has been, you know, culture defining.

Speaker 4:
[09:31] Yeah, I think the guy is pegged.

Speaker 2:
[09:32] Yeah. Which is not to say, of course, that Silent Hill isn't inspired by Japanese sources. Of course, it's inspired by Japanese sources. I mean, obviously, you know, Junji Ito is alive and exists. Don't get me wrong. But I think relevant to this discussion is what it took from American TV and movies to factor into those games, which will then factor into the movies we talk about later. So, I put together a list, let's be honest, much, much, much too many things in this list that I found.

Speaker 3:
[10:01] And then I added to it and made the list longer, and I'm sorry.

Speaker 2:
[10:06] And it's all stuff that I found either an official source for or it's just too obvious to ignore, like Kindergarten Cup. Yeah. No one, I don't think anyone in Japan has acknowledged Kindergarten Cup, but look, we've seen the screenshots. They clearly like, hey, what does an American school look like? Well, here's a Schwarzenegger movie, and they're shot at all in a real school. And let's just use that one. It's fine.

Speaker 3:
[10:28] They nailed it.

Speaker 2:
[10:29] Yeah. It's real. It's a real school. John Jacob Astor, I believe yes. So, I've been talking for a long time. By all means, why don't we start? KC, you're in the podcast. Anything on this list here that jumps out to you is something that you either love or hate that you'd like to talk about?

Speaker 4:
[11:10] Yes, the first thing that jumped out, I mean, obviously all the David Lynch there is very much so. Twin Peaks is very good, big in Japan.

Speaker 2:
[11:19] Oh yeah.

Speaker 4:
[11:20] But the first thing that snuck out that wasn't David Lynch was Alice from Jan Svankmajer, the Czech stop motion animator. And I love that movie, whose version of Alice in Wonderland is very dark and surreal and grotesque. And I remember something, maybe it wasn't a Silent Hill thing, but Jess, you and Bob were trying to find out like a screenshot from a weird game.

Speaker 3:
[11:48] Yes, it was Silent Hill 3.

Speaker 4:
[11:50] OK.

Speaker 3:
[11:52] In Heather's bedroom, there is a very strange framed picture of like a weird little guy with a big chin. And we're like, what is this? And you recognized it.

Speaker 4:
[12:01] I clocked it immediately as it was from Jan Svankmeyer's short film called The Last Trick, which is about two magicians who are humans with like giant wooden puppet heads that they like open and pull out tricks from. It's just them one upping one another. It's very goofy and funny in a way.

Speaker 3:
[12:21] Wait, like obscure?

Speaker 4:
[12:22] Yeah, yeah. Like super obscure. But I was like, I can't, of course, I know who that is. So yeah, Svankmeyer is one of my favorites that I just found randomly. All of his stuff is found online. Jacob's Ladder, I just watched that recently. Obviously, they took that.

Speaker 3:
[12:40] For the first time?

Speaker 4:
[12:41] No, no, just for the umpteenth time. I had a VHS copy and was like, I need to watch this again.

Speaker 3:
[12:47] Hell yeah.

Speaker 4:
[12:48] One that may be more obscure, I suppose, that I didn't like as much was The Tenet from Roman Polanski, which is literally not to get ahead of ourselves, is listed on the movie theater and returned to Silent Hill.

Speaker 3:
[13:02] Never put a good movie in your crappy movie.

Speaker 4:
[13:05] Yeah. Well, it mentioned Jacob's Ladder, which is the good movie and then The Tenet, which is the okay movie. I mean, Polanski's awfulness aside.

Speaker 3:
[13:15] That's Polanski right.

Speaker 4:
[13:16] Who also is in the movie. He starred in the movie.

Speaker 3:
[13:19] That's weird.

Speaker 2:
[13:21] It's rough. I think I enjoyed it because, I don't know, something about when I see a movie set in France about creepy French people, I somehow feel like I'm learning something.

Speaker 4:
[13:33] It wasn't unwatchable. I just like what it brought to horror, I guess, and tension has been done better by those that came before after it. Usually, I will give props to those that came before, but in this case, it's okay, just whatever.

Speaker 3:
[13:52] You don't got to hand it to Roman Polanski under any circumstances.

Speaker 4:
[13:56] Maybe for Rosemary's baby, but they don't really get into that. That's Silent Hill 3, and even then.

Speaker 3:
[14:02] True.

Speaker 4:
[14:03] But Tenet was just perfectly Cromulent, which is a made up Simpsons word that I've been using a lot when I watch and read things. I'm like, I don't care. It's perfectly fine.

Speaker 3:
[14:14] My favorite thing on this list is something that I feel like not a lot of people super know about. I mean, there's a lot of street names in Silent Hill are named after a lot of these guys on this list. You have Bachman Road is Stephen King's pen name that he did for Running Man, I think.

Speaker 2:
[14:31] Yeah, that's relevant in the news.

Speaker 3:
[14:34] Lynn Street is one of them. Lynn Street, Adrian Lynn, Jacob's Ladder. But there's also Coons Street. And I didn't know until a couple of years ago because I hadn't watched it. But the movie Phantoms, which came out while Silent Hill 1 was in production, I think, in 1998. Yes. Ben Affleck, Rose McGowan. It is uncannily like Silent Hill 1. There's a lot of beats that are like, you're watching this, it's just like, which one came out first? Hang on a second. They're inside a building like this scary pterodactyl-ass monster comes in, and they have to like shoot it. It's like, that's from Silent Hill, what? That's crazy. And it's like, the town is all foggy, and there's monsters everywhere, and they have to figure it out. And it goes in a totally different direction than Silent Hill 1 does. Yes, wow. It's really interesting. I do recommend it. It's a fun time. There's a weird dog in it.

Speaker 2:
[15:27] Yeah, I saw that one in the theaters, and probably just put it out of my mind, because I watched it in the theaters. I was like, oh, that was the movie I watched in the theaters and just didn't think about it until you put it on here. I was like, well, I haven't seen Phantoms in a long time. Let me re-watch that. And it was kind of like it was both dumber and more fun than I remember being. And I think a big part of it is the fact that, well, there is some late 90s dodgy CGI stuff. There's also a lot of really good puppets and tentacles and like an exploding head at some point. So I kind of got into it in that regard. And also I looked it up.

Speaker 3:
[16:02] What else do you want in a movie?

Speaker 2:
[16:03] Right. I also looked it up and there's a great interview from a few years back of Ben Affleck talking about how, he said like it's a terrible movie. He describes it as a sewer monster movie. But he's like, yeah, well, at least I get to hang out with Peter Thule and we got high and it was great. Yeah. That would have been worth it. Absolutely.

Speaker 4:
[16:24] All that matters to him. Well, Dean Coutts is a prolific writer too. So I guess it was based off a book he did.

Speaker 2:
[16:32] Yeah. The book, the book Phantoms is much, much older. But yeah, the movie was very close. I think the movie is 98 and first game is 99.

Speaker 4:
[16:42] I see. I got to read this book.

Speaker 3:
[16:44] Aesthetically, they're very similar as well as plot beats and stuff like that. I recommend it.

Speaker 4:
[16:49] I just remembered Jay shouting, you were the bomb in Phantoms, yo.

Speaker 2:
[16:54] Yeah, that was a running gag for a while.

Speaker 4:
[16:55] Whatever Kevin Smith movie that was.

Speaker 2:
[16:59] A couple of things that jumped out to me that I didn't put the connections to, Exorcist 3. Exorcist 3 is one of those movies that, obviously, it's a sequel to a very popular movie, so it has some cache, but also it has nowhere near the level of the first movie. Exorcist is one of those really strange series. The first movie everyone knows and cares about. The second movie no one loves or even thinks about anymore. And the third one is the people were like, hey, that's the really good one. That's the one they have with each other.

Speaker 4:
[17:27] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[17:28] Is that the one where the original guy who played the priest got replaced with, oh, what's that character actor's name? He's in everything.

Speaker 4:
[17:38] Brad Dourif.

Speaker 3:
[17:40] Yes, Brad Dourif. Is that the one with Brad Dourif in it?

Speaker 4:
[17:42] That's the one with Brad Dourif.

Speaker 2:
[17:43] Yeah, mental patient, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[17:45] And he does a great performance.

Speaker 3:
[17:47] He's awesome in it. Honestly, the movie's not good, but he acted the hell out of it and he was going for it. And he got cast because the other actor was like, he had such bad booze brain, he couldn't remember any lines. So they were just like, we have to replace him, kind of. So when he's possessed, he's Brad Dourif, I guess.

Speaker 4:
[18:08] That kind of worked because of course you're like, that's not the same. Wait a minute. And then Brad goes into his whole monologue, which is like, oh.

Speaker 3:
[18:17] It's awesome.

Speaker 2:
[18:18] But yeah, if you watch that movie, you'll notice that the nurse outfit is exactly what Lisa is wearing in Silent Hill 1. And like, it's just one to one. Like you cannot unsee that once you see it. Monster Hero Ito cited an Apex Twin music video called Come to Daddy, which is 1997, which I guess I missed the first time around. It's got evil kids and a lot of trash flying around, some jump cuts, a freaky monster man comes out of a television. I guess Ito was watching that one a lot at the time.

Speaker 3:
[19:16] There was another music video that was super, oh, it inspired Silent Hill 3. It's a Madonna music video, and I don't remember the name off the top of my head, though. But watch that and be like, oh, that's where Silent Hill's look came from, is this Madonna music video.

Speaker 4:
[19:32] I definitely see it in Come to Daddy, with just like all the menacing kids, and even the screaming creature. I think I saw that once and was like, I'm good.

Speaker 3:
[19:43] I saw Robert Johnny once and I was just like, I don't need to see anything else by this guy. I'm fine.

Speaker 2:
[19:49] Also, I had to watch this week because I'd heard a lot of people talk about this one. I watched a French film called Betty Blue. That's the English title. I forget the French title. It's from 86, directed by Jean-Jacques Benet. It's just a lot of owls in there. And it's not a horror movie at all. It's actually kind of a sexy French drama about two young people who are just trying to get by. And for like a good chunk of it, it's almost comic, but it gets grim later in the film. One of the top letterbox reviews is like, real sexy until it isn't. And I have a quote here from Hiroyuki Ohaku in the Silent Hill 3 Perfect Guide, which mentions a lot of inspirations for Silent Hill, including by the way, Jess, there's a complete map of Silent Hill and it lists all the streets and like identifies who they're named after. So like that guide is in Japanese, but if you look it up online, you'll find translations of like just how well they documented all the things that they were working on or thinking about. But Oaku said that Silent Hill 2 was inspired in no small way by the final scene in Betty Blue. And I don't want to say what that is to ruin either one, but like if you know one and you see the movie, you're like, okay, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[21:07] I'm intrigued. I haven't heard of this one actually.

Speaker 2:
[21:10] Don't watch it with any kids in the room. I would say like just-

Speaker 3:
[21:15] No problem. Just set the- Don't got it in you.

Speaker 2:
[21:18] Set the stage like, it's like a very lovely opening credit sequence and then hard cut coitus. Like boom.

Speaker 3:
[21:26] For rich.

Speaker 2:
[21:27] No gap.

Speaker 3:
[21:29] Ooh la la, as they say.

Speaker 2:
[21:31] Yeah, extremely French. Oh yeah. But it's equal opportunity. It's full frontal male and female. You'll love it. Also, I'm not a very good film person, I guess, because I have I've not seen any Alejandro Hodorowski movies until recently. But that's another name that comes up a lot in the Silent Hill 3 Perfect Guide. At this point, I've only seen El Topo, which other people have told me to watch because it's apparently a big favorite of Suda 51. And people said that informs a lot of Suda 51's work. And certainly in El Topo, it's like this surreal Western. And at one point, this gunman is told, hey, you got to go in the desert and take out these other gunmen. They're like the good gunmen. And you got to kill them and then you'll be the best gunman, which I could see is that informing No More Heroes. But in the second half of the movie, which is very different than the first half, he like shaves his head and like becomes like a monk or something. And then he's hanging out in this town. And the town is like full of creepy cult stuff. And you're like, OK, that kind of Silent Hill.

Speaker 3:
[22:37] Interesting. I've only seen bits and pieces of Holy Mountain.

Speaker 2:
[22:42] Yeah. His later films, I think, are more Silent Hill-esque, I've been told. But I haven't seen them yet. I'm sorry. I will. If you look at my letterbox, and you should, you'll see a lot of movies that we discussed on this list because I've been re-watching a lot of them. But I haven't gotten that far into the Hodorowski oeuvre. But I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued. I thought El Topo was good. One kind of superfluous rape scene aside, but yeah.

Speaker 4:
[23:09] I've been told I would love Holy Mountain by many a friend, but I've actually never seen any Hodorowski. Movie night? I need to fix that. I need to watch Topo, Holy Mountain.

Speaker 3:
[23:24] Is Holy Mountain too weird for a movie night with people? I think it might be.

Speaker 4:
[23:27] Maybe. I don't know. I haven't seen it.

Speaker 2:
[23:33] Also, last one, I'll just shout out here because I didn't expect it, even though I totally understand. Yamaoka was cited as saying Suspiria, the Argento film from 77. He said it was his favorite movie, and he had a quote that said, Goblin went into film and forced their music to expand as rock musicians, which I think is just sweet thing to say. I do love Suspiria, so like, okay, sure, I get it. I don't think that's, as Silent Hill influences go, I don't really see a lot of Giallo in Silent Hill, but that will be rules, so yeah, by all means.

Speaker 3:
[24:06] I could see Silent Hill being more Giallo though if they wanted to.

Speaker 4:
[24:09] Absolutely. That would be an interesting turn for them.

Speaker 3:
[24:13] Aesthetically, think about it, developers, consider it. I know you're listening, you're not listening.

Speaker 4:
[24:20] Is there even a horror game that could be called Giallo Horror, the type of game out there? Resident Evil doesn't really get into that.

Speaker 3:
[24:29] There's a couple of indie horror games that I've seen trailers for that I don't know if they ever came out or anything.

Speaker 4:
[24:36] Anything by the puppet combo, folks, probably.

Speaker 3:
[24:40] I don't know them, do I?

Speaker 2:
[24:41] That's possible. They go for the low poly aesthetic and they have a lot of weirdness to them. Certainly, if we're talking about horror games, I would mention that Phenomena, another digital movie, Phenomena is very closely translated into Clocktower. There's a lot of one-to-one stuff in that connection. But then Clocktower goes off and becomes its own weird thing too. The history of Japanese games, I think, is like we saw a movie once and tried to make it into a game, but we changed too much and now it's our own thing. Don't copy it.

Speaker 3:
[25:13] They're very good at jumping off points.

Speaker 4:
[25:16] We had to get them into some giallo, just send them a bunch of Argento stuff.

Speaker 2:
[26:13] All right, I think that's enough background work. Let's talk about how Silent Hill Games became Silent Hill Movie. And to start with that, we gotta talk about a little boy born in France. And-

Speaker 3:
[26:25] Un petit homme.

Speaker 2:
[26:29] I don't know, is Sacros to call him Christophe Gans, or is it Christophe Gans? I'm actually not sure how to pronounce-

Speaker 3:
[26:34] I believe it is Gans.

Speaker 2:
[26:35] Okay, I'll do my best. I studied French a long time ago, folks. But Christophe Gans is a filmmaker. By the way, KC, Jess, have you seen Brotherhood of the Wolf?

Speaker 4:
[26:46] No. Not yet.

Speaker 2:
[26:48] Brotherhood of the Wolf was definitely his breakout hit, 2001. It's a wild picture. I would argue it is too long, but you've got French history, and it's a monster movie, and there's a lot of martial arts. Mark Dacascos is there kicking people. It's a real fun watch even though I think it drags a little bit. But still, definitely wonder why. I can see how that would make up Splash. You come out with that. But at some point during the making of that movie, Christophe Gans puts a PlayStation in his trailer or whatever, and he plays Silent Hill 1, and he loves it. He loves Silent Hill. He immediately starts, I guess, it's 1999, 2000, so what? Maybe he's sending e-mails to someone. He's trying to reach to Konami. He's like, I want to make your video game into a movie. Please let me make a movie. And, you know, Konami's Konami's like, they don't answer for a long time.

Speaker 3:
[27:42] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[27:44] Shortly after Brotherhood of the Wolf comes out, 2001, Silent Hill 2 comes out. Gans puts that in his PlayStation 2. And he loves that even more. So, Drussof Gans is on record as saying that is his favorite game of all time.

Speaker 3:
[27:58] I saw an interview with him recently, because I'm doing my own research for a video about Return to Silent Hill. And it was interviewing him for Return to Silent Hill and they asked him, what your favorite game is, and he said Bioshock. So, I don't know if he's changed his opinion on the greatest game of all time.

Speaker 2:
[28:15] He's flip-flopping.

Speaker 4:
[28:16] Fake-ass gamer.

Speaker 3:
[28:17] He loved Bioshock.

Speaker 4:
[28:21] He would.

Speaker 3:
[28:23] Right?

Speaker 2:
[28:25] So, post Silent Hill 2, I have a quote from Gans. He says, we were chasing the right since the beginning and we had no answer. We were sending tons of messages, emails and letters and no answer. And then, the second game came and I played it and I was blown away. And again, I asked for the rights and no answer.

Speaker 3:
[28:42] Left him on red.

Speaker 2:
[28:44] Rouge, Rouge, please. So, at some point, Gans works with some folks, I guess translator as well. He records a 37-minute pitch video, has a subtitle in Japanese and he sends the video to Tokyo. And then according to Gans, he says two months later, he got the rights. So, whatever he was doing before video, the video worked. And suddenly-

Speaker 3:
[29:09] What I wouldn't give to see whatever the hell that is.

Speaker 2:
[29:12] I wish, I wish.

Speaker 4:
[29:13] Is that the bonus feature somewhere?

Speaker 2:
[29:15] You know, it's hard. It's hard to research the making of these movies because when you go online, a lot of the sources are either in French, but in an HTML fashion that I can't translate in my browser, or it's like bootleg Russian sites and they're all dubbed into Russian. I don't know. This movie must have done Gangbusters in Russian because they archived everything.

Speaker 3:
[29:37] Weird.

Speaker 2:
[29:38] But because Gans loves Silent Hill 2 so much, he's like, okay, I want to make a movie. Let's just make a movie for Silent Hill 2. This is the best one. That's his original idea. But as he starts to develop it, he's like, this won't work. According to him, he says, it was impossible to talk about Silent Hill and not talk about why this town is like that. So we realized we had to adapt the first one. That was his thinking.

Speaker 4:
[30:06] I'm grimacing. I'm shaking my head. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 3:
[30:10] You're incorrect, sir. You're wrong. What's really crazy is that when he does finally get to adapting Silent Hill 2, it's different. It's not a sequel. Why did you say that it's too hard to make a sequel? It's not a sequel to begin with, and you didn't make it a sequel either.

Speaker 4:
[30:28] What? Gons. Kristoff.

Speaker 2:
[30:32] Kristoff.

Speaker 3:
[30:33] Kristoff.

Speaker 4:
[30:36] Getting ahead of ourselves, I would still see a Silent Hill 4 The Room remake, or movie out of him. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Speaker 2:
[30:47] Two names we also need to mention at this point is Samuel Hadida and Don Caramodi, who are the producers for the first two films. They both have credits on several Resident Evil films, which again, just like Resident Evil The Game inspired Silent Hill The Game, we should point out in 2002, Resident Evil The Movie comes out and does very well, especially international markets. And I think they quickly rattle off sequels, which are of varying quality, I would say. But within a couple of years, Resident Evil The Movie franchise becomes very big business. So again, I'm sure the people at Konami are like, oh, don't we have a Resident Evil? What's this video we tape in the mail? Let's put that in. And then boom, all of a sudden, here we go. Here's a nice foreign man who wants to make our video game into a movie. Let's do it.

Speaker 3:
[31:40] We trust the French.

Speaker 2:
[31:42] Maybe, maybe.

Speaker 4:
[31:43] He's kind of business oriented, this Konami.

Speaker 3:
[31:47] For a change.

Speaker 2:
[31:49] Unfortunately, Hadida passed away in 2018, so he did not get to work on the third movie. But don't worry, his brother, Victor Hadida, is still in the ecosphere there. And honestly, if you look up Hadida, there's so many people named Hadida with so many credits on IMDB. I do not know if they're all like children or brothers or uncles. I don't know. I don't know how. This man definitely had his whole family in the business. So like the Copulas. Although it's interesting, the Resident Evil movies, which I do like in their own way because they develop their own flavor and they go off in a weird direction and just take off. It's funny how the Silent Hill movies in general, we'll talk about what happens, but in general, the Silent Hill films are all much closer to the source material than the Resident Evil movies. Resident Evil, the first movie kind of borrows bits from one and two, and then the second movie has a nemesis in it, and then the third movie is like, we're doing Matt Mac's now, fuck you. It just goes off.

Speaker 3:
[32:57] I'm out of my depth with Resident Evil movies. I realize I don't think I've seen a single one.

Speaker 2:
[33:02] Well, that'll be another podcast.

Speaker 3:
[33:03] There's like a jillion of them.

Speaker 4:
[33:05] There's too many of them, and personally, I'm sick of them all, so get someone else to do that podcast.

Speaker 3:
[33:10] All of my time, I statted into watching all the Saw movies instead of all the Resident Evil movies. I didn't have time for both. Again, I'm pushing 40 suits. I can't do all this.

Speaker 2:
[33:23] But in contrast to that, the Silent Hill movies, as we'll break down, the first Silent Hill movie borrows a lot from Silent Hill 1, and the second Silent Hill movie borrows a lot from Silent Hill 3, and the third Silent Hill movie ostensibly is an adaptation of Silent Hill 2.

Speaker 3:
[33:40] Allegedly.

Speaker 2:
[33:41] Allegedly. So I was like, it's funny to me how closely they hew to the source material compared to its contemporary, which obviously inspired it a lot. Like, at no point does Gons or whoever say, hey, we need to develop our own, we need to create our new character, and this is going to be the new star of the character, and it's also my wife. Like, that doesn't happen here. Seriously, though, can I just say, a lot of people hate Paul W. Sanderson. I appreciate Paul W. Sanderson for making weird stuff and being totally all in, like, hey, my wife is an action star, all my movies now star my wife, and he just goes for it. Monster Hunter stars my wife. Yes, it's fine.

Speaker 3:
[34:21] I do like Mila Jovovich. I don't know why I haven't seen any of these movies.

Speaker 4:
[34:25] That's an honest man.

Speaker 2:
[34:28] I've already forgotten the name, to be honest.

Speaker 3:
[34:30] Honest wife guy.

Speaker 4:
[34:31] Honest wife guy.

Speaker 2:
[34:32] He recently made a movie, and it stars Mia and Dave Bautista. And the entire movie, I swear to you, looks like a PS3 cutscene, but I mean that as a compliment. It's an ugly movie, but it's also fascinating to look at, and it's just wild. It has incredible energy to it. I think she's a witch? Yeah, I've already forgot the name. It came out like six months ago and bombed. It's already streaming here in Japan. I already forgot the name, but I loved watching it. It's my endorsement.

Speaker 3:
[35:01] On the list.

Speaker 4:
[35:03] Putting it on the list.

Speaker 2:
[35:30] But speaking of the PlayStation 3 in 2006, Silent Hill, the movie.

Speaker 3:
[35:34] The movie.

Speaker 2:
[35:36] Directed by Kristoff Gans. And written by, let's talk about it, let's add a new name to this podcast. Written by indie big shot Roger Avery, Oscar winner for Pulp Fiction.

Speaker 3:
[35:48] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[35:49] Avery writes a script. Avery writes a script, and I think we can safely blame Roger Avery here. He's the one who makes connection to Centralia, Pennsylvania. And Jess, it's your turn. Tell the people about Centralia, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3:
[36:04] So, Centralia, Pennsylvania is a real life town that no Japanese person in 1999 would have ever heard about or make a video game off of. Yeah. Because it was a town that had a big coal mine or something like that underneath of it, and it got set on fire somehow. The fires are still burning and everyone had to move away because all the fumes, that's bad. You don't want to live with that. People were getting sick, stuff like that. So everybody moved out and it became a ghost town. Not that special, just a weird thing to happen to a place, but it was a very niche trivia item of some sort for people that are into that ghost towns and stuff. I don't know where Roger Avery learned about it, but he's like, oh, I'm just going to make Silent Hill be based off of that town. And this has super confused everybody from here on out. Everyone thinks that Silent Hill, the games are based off of Centralia, Pennsylvania. God damn it, it ain't. Because in Silent Hill, the fog and stuff and the stuff falling for the sky is not ash or smoke. It is snow and fog. And it is weird because it's like the wrong time of year for it to be snowing. But people just go like, wow, that's weird. There's no explanation for it. It doesn't really have to be. Can things just be weird, guys?

Speaker 2:
[37:22] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[37:23] So I was like, Roger didn't play the game.

Speaker 3:
[37:25] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[37:26] Mm-hmm. Allegedly, he was playing the games on repeat while he was writing the screenplay. But I don't know what happened. Something disappeared between the screen and his brain there.

Speaker 3:
[37:40] I don't know what happened because they made the heroine into a villain. So I don't know what game he was playing during that.

Speaker 2:
[37:47] I do, by the way. I looked it up because it's been 20 years. As of the most recent census, Centralia, Pennsylvania has a population of five.

Speaker 3:
[37:57] It's gone up.

Speaker 2:
[37:58] Five people. All the remaining residents have gotten clearance. You're allowed to live here as long as you keep doing the living thing. But once you die, we're going to just bulldoze this place.

Speaker 3:
[38:12] I thought there was only two people left.

Speaker 2:
[38:14] Most of the town at this point has been eminent domain. There's no post office. There's nothing there. They must go shopping somewhere else. I don't understand. But there are people who still live there because that's their home. But yeah, there's not going to be any future. A day comes pretty soon where there is no one left in Centralia.

Speaker 3:
[38:34] No one's going to Centralia and gentrify the place at this point.

Speaker 2:
[38:38] Oh, my Lord.

Speaker 3:
[38:40] Got to get all these monsters out of here and make some brunch places.

Speaker 2:
[38:44] So the movie, we've got our main character, Rose De Silva, played by Roda Mitchell. Rose De Silva, she goes to Silent Hill, West Virginia to look for her daughter Sharon. And this is significant because obviously the first game stars a little boy named Harry Mason and a little 32-year-old boy.

Speaker 4:
[39:12] He's a full-fledged man looking for his daughter.

Speaker 3:
[39:15] It's a full-fledged girl, dad.

Speaker 2:
[39:17] When working on this script and developing the story, and all the quotes here come from Gans. I don't know if Roger ever agreed with him or what, but all the quotes I found come from Gans directly. Gans looked at this like, hey, so we've got this guy, Harry Mason, and he's looking for his daughter. And like, that's a woman thing.

Speaker 3:
[39:36] That's not gay, right?

Speaker 2:
[39:38] A little quote, I have a little quote, okay? We love to paraphrase in this podcast, but a literal quote here, oneup.com, Christoph Gans talking to Shane Bettenhausen. He says, Harry was actually motivated by feminine, almost maternal feelings. And it's like, what's the word? I know you're not a native English speaker, Christoph, but what's the word when you're a dad and you have a kid? So what's the P? Paternal.

Speaker 4:
[40:03] Paternal.

Speaker 2:
[40:05] Paternal feelings.

Speaker 4:
[40:06] Just switch it. One letter, man.

Speaker 3:
[40:09] I've never heard of this before. It's not like there's an entire genre of action movies based off dad saving their daughters from stuff.

Speaker 2:
[40:17] Like, I may be a non-binary person, but I'm a dad. I have a dad. I've got kids. They're my kids. I'm not a woman for carrying my kids.

Speaker 4:
[40:23] He could have been ahead of the game on the taking stuff.

Speaker 3:
[40:27] So yeah, he changed the protagonist to a woman for sexist reasons somehow and not feminist reasons. It wasn't a girl boss reason.

Speaker 4:
[40:37] There are too many fingerprints of Avery and Gans on this thing. When it's like, it's a solid movie plot in of itself. You don't need to fuck it up too much, guys.

Speaker 3:
[40:48] Yeah. What's the problem? Why we got to change so much? I have another quote, and this is from Roger Avery talking about Christophe. He was saying that Christophe wanted the movie to be estrogen-filled, and during this interview, he broke into an impression of the Frenchman that was apparently pretty good. And he said, and this is him imitating Gantz, I like women, I like to fuck the American bimbo. I want to make a movie with no men and have sexy women throughout. Women everywhere. I don't want to have all these men to deal with or the attitudes of men.

Speaker 4:
[41:25] Awesome.

Speaker 3:
[41:26] He just dropped that in an interview. Like what? You're talking about like your coworker like that. Dude, never gonna work with him again.

Speaker 4:
[41:35] For many reasons.

Speaker 3:
[41:36] Yeah, we'll get to that in a sec.

Speaker 2:
[41:41] It's actually, it's also, the timing of this is amazing. Just this week, brand new blog, video game blog, I think Culture Blog Mothership, had a post about the British Silent Hill movie where they tried to, yeah, Jess is covering her face. They tried to put a spin on it by arguing the first movie is somehow feminist by centering it on a mother instead of a father, and I don't want to blow up the writer or whatever. They're free to make their argument if they want to make their argument, but the response I saw online was pretty quick. It's like, no, he changed it because he thought being a dad was like gay. He thought it was gay.

Speaker 3:
[42:22] That's like such an uninformed opinion. I just assume it was made for hate clicks. Write something stupid that everyone can go, no, at and get mad about and then tweet about it and post about it, because that is like a bonkers stupid opinion. I'm sorry to the writer.

Speaker 2:
[42:40] Also related, because they decided to change the main character entirely, they also opted to change the name. They didn't do like Rose Mason or whatever, like, no, no, it's a new character, Rose Silva, okay, fine, we got new Rose Silva and Sharon instead of Heather.

Speaker 3:
[42:55] Cheryl.

Speaker 2:
[42:56] Cheryl, excuse me. Rose's husband, Chris, Chris Silva, played by Sean Bean. He is in the movie to chase after his wife and he can't catch up to her. Whenever he goes somewhere, she's either not there anymore or she's like in another dimension, so he can't see her. And really, there's just a huge chunk of this movie where he's like looking up stuff and chasing after people and talking to the cops. And it's like the whole movie is happening in another dimension and he's just here. And I really, I cannot find a clear answer on what, why this is because-

Speaker 4:
[43:31] He's for the information for the us, the audience about like what happened to Silent Hill.

Speaker 3:
[43:36] But he hardly finds things out.

Speaker 4:
[43:38] I know, it's stuff that could have easily been inserted into the main story.

Speaker 3:
[43:42] Yeah, I mean, he was only put in there because there was too many broads in the movie, some producer said.

Speaker 2:
[43:47] Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3:
[43:48] You gotta put one guy in the movie, get me Sean Bean.

Speaker 2:
[43:51] Good God.

Speaker 3:
[43:52] Get me Ken Coates. Yeah, they'll have their own adventures.

Speaker 2:
[43:55] There's an unsourced quote that said the studio insisted there would be, there has to be a man in it, which is kind of wild after they changed the main character, whatever.

Speaker 3:
[44:03] I believe Avery said that also.

Speaker 2:
[44:05] But I guess, I mean, I guess if you want to put a man in it, you can put a man in it, but his scenes just don't do anything. He doesn't really go anywhere. It's like...

Speaker 4:
[44:14] I don't think they don't go anywhere. Even as information, it does that. Even that could be easily sub-suited by something else. I always liked the scene where he's at the school and so is Rose, and they sort of, in the other version, and they pass by each other. That helps explain kind of the otherworldly kind of feeling of the whole thing.

Speaker 3:
[44:37] The whole level is different planes of reality.

Speaker 4:
[44:38] I like that. I always liked that, and if that's all he was there to do, I think that'd be enough. Because everything else with him and trying to figure out what happened to Silent Hill and the cop and shit like that, that's stupid, get rid of it.

Speaker 3:
[44:52] It's largely pointless to the point where two people in my Discord made their own version called Silent Hill No Beans. And they took out Sean Bean, and it is a tight movie. It is better and tighter without Sean Bean in it. And I love Sean Bean.

Speaker 2:
[45:09] Yeah, I mean, no disrespect to Sean Bean. He's a class act all around.

Speaker 3:
[45:13] Love him.

Speaker 2:
[45:15] It is, I mean, look, let's be honest. Again, in the 2000s horror movie tradition, they have Europeans playing Americans. I think it is really weird. It's really weird to hear Sean Bean try to be American because I have a very clear image of what Sean Bean sounds like in my head. It's like hearing David Tennant playing American. No, no, don't do it.

Speaker 4:
[45:36] We wouldn't lose anything by letting him have an accent in that movie.

Speaker 3:
[45:38] I know, just let him be himself. It's so funny hearing him and also later on in the second movie, John Snow, I'm blanking on his name right now, but I know it. Kit Harington. Both of them are in these movies, and both of them are trying to sound American, and sometimes it sounds like they phonetically memorize their lines. It's so awkward. They get the weirdest accent choices, where certain words are super not American sounding. It's fun to see them struggle in this way. It adds an element to the movie I enjoy.

Speaker 2:
[46:17] Roda Mitchell, I believe, is Australian. She's not American either. I think she's Australian based on the accent I heard in the behind-the-scenes work.

Speaker 3:
[46:24] Also, Heather, later in the movie, also Australian. I don't know why they don't get a single American or Canadian in here.

Speaker 2:
[46:30] Cheaper. I don't want to tip my head. I guess.

Speaker 3:
[46:33] I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Speaker 2:
[46:34] No, I don't want to tip my head, but she's literally named Adelaide. I know. It's like if I named my son Chicago.

Speaker 3:
[46:44] Get me Sidney Camberra to play this American girl.

Speaker 2:
[46:48] Other actors. So we got Laurie Holden playing Sybil. I'm not the only person, I think. I think she gives Sybil kind of a lesbian energy. I think she's got some butch power that is not there in the game. The game 3D model is just like, we want pretty American cop, but she's got an edge to her and she's very forceful.

Speaker 3:
[47:11] I think a non-zero percentage of that is because the protagonists change genders though.

Speaker 2:
[47:15] Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 4:
[47:17] Yeah, I can see that, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[47:19] But I also, I credit Laurie just for her performance. She's very headstrong and they gave her a haircut. I don't know, the haircut doesn't lifting there, I think. Forgive me. But let's also shout out JoDell Furland, the little girl who plays Sharon De Silva and of course, Alyssa. She was- Alyssa. Alyssa, I'm sorry. She is like maybe 10 or 11 years old when she's doing this movie. I'm so jealous she got to go on Conan to promote this movie. So there's just a lovely interview of Conan interviewing a child about the horror movie and he's got the poster because she's on the poster without a mouth. And so they talk with that, which is kind of cute.

Speaker 4:
[48:02] That's kind of sweet.

Speaker 1:
[48:02] I didn't realize you were on Conan.

Speaker 2:
[48:04] And speaking of Bioshock, a few years later, JoDell would voice the little sisters in Bioshock too. And at this point, she's all grown up, she's a full adult, and I think she's still working, so good for her. I believe she's Canadian. Close? Close to America?

Speaker 3:
[48:23] Imagine a British kid having to stamp down their British accent. That would be child abuse.

Speaker 2:
[48:29] Well, that's Return to Silent Hill. So, I don't wanna break down the entire plot of this movie, but I feel like, what's your take on the general story? They obviously borrowed a lot from One, but they go in weird directions. KC, why don't you give me some point?

Speaker 4:
[49:51] This is the most watchable of the three, in my opinion. And they do, even with the superficial changes of it's Rose, the Silva and all that stuff, it takes pretty close to One, with even like the camera stuff, like they do that classic scene where she's going down the hallway in the first one and all that stuff, but it really becomes down to the touches they felt, they being Christoph Gaines and Avery and whoever else needed to add to it, make it about a cult, or make it about more about the cult than it was anything else. They're all just witch-burders. They're not summoning anything and only that shit. That carries over, again, not to get too ahead, that carries over in each movie. Obviously, three needs it, but two? I had seen this in theaters and enjoyed myself, but watching the other two outside of theaters, I was like, is this original? Is this still good?

Speaker 3:
[50:54] I feel like it's only good in comparison to the later ones. It resembles a movie more than the other ones.

Speaker 4:
[51:02] Oh, a hundred percent, but it's not bad. Like I said, it's more watchable.

Speaker 3:
[51:07] It's mid, it's fine. But as far as faithfulness goes, the things that they did choose to change seemed to me to be so pointless and only serves to make the plot more convoluted than it needs to be. Silent Hill 1 is a perfectly cromulent plot. But like, you know, one thing they did that really didn't jive with me is that Alessa's mom, Dahlia, in the game, she's just an evil old crazy lady who runs the cult. She is super dupes, fucking evil. And in the movie, they were like, well, we can't have Alessa's mom be bad. So what if we split her up into two different characters? One is called Dahlia, and she's like a crazy unhoused woman that's all tattered and weird. These movies have like a thing against the homeless people. I don't know, they keep showing up as jump scares. I'm like, do you have something to say about this? It's like, what the hell's wrong with you people?

Speaker 4:
[52:06] French people.

Speaker 3:
[52:07] French, I don't know. Yikes, guys. I can kill it with the homeless people jump scares. But you've got Dahlia is now like her mom, but just got tricked into burning her child alive in a ritual. What? And then you have Christabella, who is functionally, actually Dahlia with her things she does and the way she acts and all that stuff. And it's like, they were so, it went against their weird thesis they were doing with a mother is God in the eyes of a child. And if we're doing that thesis, we can't have Alessa's mom be evil. So it just like all these like ripples of garbage came out from like changing different things. It's like, okay, now you have to like reconcile with all these other things because you change this other thing for no reason. It's just messy, but it's functional as a movie.

Speaker 4:
[52:58] Yeah, it's very messy. Like whenever they try to explain the cults or like do like the passage of time of like who remained in Silent Hill compared to like who's not in Silent Hill, who was able to leave like the cop who was there when they burned Alessa but is also outside of Silent Hill to tell Sean Bean to quit looking into the cult.

Speaker 3:
[53:18] Was she there? I don't even remember anymore.

Speaker 4:
[53:21] It was the same, it wasn't Sybil, it was like the detective guy.

Speaker 3:
[53:25] Officer Gucci, Kim Coase.

Speaker 1:
[53:26] Yeah, Officer Gucci.

Speaker 2:
[53:27] Officer Gucci.

Speaker 3:
[53:29] Okay, what's with all the Italians in this movie? Okay, I'm Italian, I gotta say, what's with all these Italians? Da Silva?

Speaker 4:
[53:37] Gucci?

Speaker 3:
[53:37] What's going on here? West Virginia is really Italian.

Speaker 4:
[53:42] When it really gets into that, that's where it starts to falter. I'm like, I can't follow any of this bullshit anymore, but then it gets into the fun pieces, like the final, not boss battle, but here comes Alessa to kill you all. It's like, oh good, I'm happy that's happened.

Speaker 3:
[54:04] But like, you know, in the game, like she's not doing this for vengeance. They really changed or misunderstood perhaps her character, because like in the game, she is, it certainly looks like vengeance, because it looks like she's making hell happen, but it's, you know, she's trying to stop the ritual by consuming Silent Hill, the town, so you can't summon God if you don't have a place to summon it basically. So she's doing heroic stuff, but it looks evil, because Dahlia, the bad guy, told you, whoa, that girl's evil, evil ghost girl, ah. And people played that game and then went, oh, evil ghost girl, ah, I heard that part. Let's make that a script.

Speaker 2:
[54:45] Well, speaking of messy, Pyramid is here. Pyramid Head does not appear in the first game, but by this point, Pyramid Head is too famous not to be in Silent Hill. So Pyramid Head will in fact be appearing in every Silent Hill movie. He is played by Roberto Campanella in these first two films, and there is definitely early internet days, like, instant, very famous gift made of this. Pyramid Head shows up at one point, pulls off a woman's clothes, and then pulls off a woman's skin, and then throws the skin at Rose, or Sybil, I forget which.

Speaker 3:
[55:16] That's really feminist when you think about it. All the skin getting thrown at a church, and all the people, you know.

Speaker 4:
[55:26] It's all superficial, my epidermis.

Speaker 3:
[55:29] This is, you know, powerful girl power stuff to be flayed alive. And also, the final boss has like a barbed wire rape scene. What?

Speaker 4:
[55:43] Yeah, they go nuts with that barbed wire at the end.

Speaker 3:
[55:45] Chill it. Cool it, Gons. Not necessary.

Speaker 2:
[55:50] Well, personally, I find the first movie pretty watchable overall. And I kind of, again, I've watched it more than once in recent years, and it's grown on me a little bit. I think there's definitely the bean scenes drag, in my opinion. But I like the work they put in to make Silent Hill look weird. And like, I think the sort of uncanny CG of the era only helps it sort of build atmosphere.

Speaker 4:
[56:19] I think it looks better than the other two's CGI, to be quite honest. Like, something about it, they hide it a little more in shadows. I mean, we'll get into a revelation, but...

Speaker 2:
[56:30] But they really do play the hits. Like, you know, she goes to the school, she goes to the bathroom, there's horrible things in there, she finds keys, she reads notes on the wall. They think, you know, they did do their homework. They just got a strange, they had some strange ideas in putting on the paper.

Speaker 3:
[56:46] The thing with me is that, like, I consider, like, the word faithful, what does it really mean when you're adapting something? And I feel like the aesthetic goes a long way into like, I don't want to say tricking people into thinking it's faithful or authentic, but it goes a long way to have that authentic feeling to it. But like, to me, being faithful is being faithful to the characters and the story, and like, how Silent Hill looks is kind of like secondary to that stuff. And it just kind of feels like over and over again that Gans and crew at all respect the vibes and the aesthetic more than the story and the characters and the emotional cores of these stories, basically, is what I'm going for.

Speaker 4:
[57:28] Yeah, I could see that. I could see them easily.

Speaker 3:
[57:30] You're allowed to like it.

Speaker 4:
[57:31] Yeah, I could see them easily playing this game and like, not getting every little thing story-wise, but being like, what a fascinating game. This is my French accent. You know, it's a... He seems like only seeing his two Silent Hill movies and not Brotherhood of the Wolf, he seems like he has a superficial enjoyment of Silent Hill that worked once.

Speaker 2:
[57:58] Well, speaking of vibes, Akira Yomoka, his music is featured throughout the movie. He's not the credited composer. They credit someone else as the composer, but if you watch this film, you will hear so many tunes, straight from the games, straight from Yomoka. I don't think they're remixed. I think it's just straight up, here's the tunes.

Speaker 3:
[58:17] I think they are actually from the game, like directly at the OST.

Speaker 4:
[58:22] Nothing wrong with that.

Speaker 3:
[58:23] He didn't re-orchestrate anyway.

Speaker 4:
[58:24] That works great.

Speaker 3:
[58:25] For the recent one, he did re-orchestrate though.

Speaker 4:
[58:27] Even like you said, the song from the third game is the closing credits song for one. The first movie, right? I think so. That's just a solid song.

Speaker 3:
[58:39] Yeah, they all close with some of the best vocal tracks that he's made for the series, honestly.

Speaker 2:
[59:10] So Silent Hill, the movie, opens, critics don't really like it. Audiences seem to show up, though. It makes a decent amount of money. So obviously, it's time to talk Sequel. But what happens? What happened? Well, number one, Christopher Gans is not available. Best that I could understand, Christopher Gans was very eager to make an Onimusha adaptation, which as of 2026 has not happened.

Speaker 3:
[59:35] That is wild. What the hell does that mean and look like?

Speaker 4:
[59:41] I don't think I've ever played Onimusha.

Speaker 2:
[59:43] I can only assume he played the one with Jean Reno. It was like, oh, I got to make this movie.

Speaker 3:
[59:46] Oh, well, yeah. I didn't know he was involved. The Frenchman's Promise.

Speaker 2:
[59:54] I don't know what happened to that. Roger Avery was unavailable because he was in jail.

Speaker 3:
[59:59] In jail!

Speaker 2:
[60:01] Yeah, jail for vehicular manslaughter. So he killed a human being, but I guess didn't mean to.

Speaker 4:
[60:09] Was it a DUI or just a driving pain?

Speaker 3:
[60:11] I don't think it. I don't remember actually, but I know that his passenger was a friend of his that he was having over at his house or something like that. He was driving this guy and his wife back home or somewhere, and his wife was at the back seat. Wife was fine, husband died. Avery was fine, probably banged up, but I don't know. But yeah, went to jail.

Speaker 4:
[60:35] Ah, it was under suspicion of manslaughter and DUI. I wanted to double check on that without saying like, yeah, this guy was drunk and killed a bunch of people. Just one.

Speaker 3:
[60:45] Well, I guess if it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 2:
[60:49] So they hand the reins to relative newcomer MJ Bassett. I'm using initials purposely because that's how they're credited these days. They have actually transitioned. So if you watch the film, it won't say MJ Bassett credits, but they are now MJ Bassett. So good for them.

Speaker 3:
[61:07] Dope.

Speaker 2:
[61:08] However, there's also a curious bit in the credits where even though they say, it says written and directed by MJ Bassett, there's also in the scrolling credits bit, there's a little line that says, adapted by Laurent Hadida, who is son of Samuel Hadida. So I'm not sure who did the writing there if someone has a separate adaptation credit. I don't know what the Writers Guild, well, I don't know what that means, but the producer's son apparently gave a draft, I guess.

Speaker 3:
[61:34] A bit of nepotism going on in these movies, guys.

Speaker 2:
[61:38] What's going on with that?

Speaker 4:
[61:39] What I know, doing a little bit of work and trying to sell stuff to Hollywood, whoever gets the writing credit is the one who actually did the actual typing of the whole thing. Anyone can join in and write in a group setting or whatnot. But that's neither here nor there.

Speaker 2:
[61:57] So following the act of the first film, which was close to one, they do a direct sequel thing and they think, okay, well, let's just make a movie based on Silent Hill 3 because Silent Hill 3 has so many ties to Silent Hill 1. So now we have a movie starring Heather played by Adelaide Clemens, Australian.

Speaker 3:
[62:14] G'day.

Speaker 4:
[62:14] That's very Australian.

Speaker 2:
[62:16] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[62:17] G'day, ma'am.

Speaker 2:
[62:18] She's now 18 year old Sharon, but she's Sharon anymore. Of course, she's Heather. Obviously, when the time comes for it, she plays grown up Alessa, although I mean, look, I'm sure this is something for everyone in this wide world, but to me, her goth look like almost has like a panda style to it.

Speaker 3:
[62:36] I think her makeup looks like a panda.

Speaker 2:
[62:38] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[62:39] I don't know why they gave her black lipstick and put a little like black soot on her bottom of her nose. She looks adorable.

Speaker 2:
[62:49] Sean Bean returns. Sean Bean returns as dad. Although fun fake out, you know, for a man who has his entire career has very famously died on screen like dozens and dozens of times. He's playing a character who absolutely dies in that video game.

Speaker 3:
[63:03] Yes, and he does it in this one.

Speaker 2:
[63:05] It's insane. They fake you out. You think he's dead. He gets jumped off screen. You think he's dead. He survives. Makes it.

Speaker 3:
[63:12] He played a non-character in Silent Hill 1, somehow didn't die, and then he plays a guy who does die in the sequel, does not die. What's going on? This is insane.

Speaker 2:
[63:23] Incredible power for Sean Bean.

Speaker 3:
[63:25] He's out of his wheelhouse surviving like this.

Speaker 4:
[63:27] Well, let's put his ass in the room and make him do that whole thing.

Speaker 3:
[63:31] He can be hungry in the room.

Speaker 4:
[63:32] Yeah. He's done. He's like, Heather's somewhere. I'll just hang out in the room.

Speaker 3:
[63:39] He's playing against type.

Speaker 2:
[63:41] Anyway, Heather and I guess they call him Harry at this point because they've all changed their names many times. They are living on the run. They're moving around. They don't want to get tied down in one place. There's a whole opening scene where Heather goes to her high school and is greeted by other 20-somethings and they're all snotty to her like, do you do all your shopping at the Goodwill? And she gives a whole speech. She gives a little speech like, I'm not your friend. I'll be gone soon. Fuck all y'all.

Speaker 3:
[64:08] Don't get to know me. I don't do Facebook.

Speaker 4:
[64:14] Kid Harrington over there, oh, I kind of want to know her.

Speaker 2:
[64:17] I'll give them credit. This is when we came out in 2012 and Heather said, fuck Facebook and she was right.

Speaker 3:
[64:22] Yeah, prophetic.

Speaker 4:
[64:24] Nice. That was the only fuck they got in this movie or was it rated R?

Speaker 2:
[64:28] This has got to be rated R, got to be rated R, too much. There's too many fingers flying at the screen to be rated PG-13. I don't know. This is 2012, the same year as Social Network. I wonder which one came out first.

Speaker 4:
[64:40] I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[64:41] I didn't look that up.

Speaker 4:
[64:42] I'll look it up.

Speaker 2:
[64:43] Anyway, other people are here. We got Douglas. Douglas played by reliable character actor Martin Donovan who doesn't really look the part, but he's here to be gruff and get killed and lose his fingers.

Speaker 3:
[64:55] That's a character that lasts the whole damn game. He gets killed like minute four that you've seen him. It's nuts.

Speaker 4:
[65:02] What a weird reorganizing of all this stuff, especially what Vincent's character becomes.

Speaker 3:
[65:08] Oh boy. Here we go.

Speaker 4:
[65:09] Also, Social Network came out first.

Speaker 2:
[65:12] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[65:13] Two years earlier.

Speaker 2:
[65:16] 2010? Jeez.

Speaker 4:
[65:18] 2010.

Speaker 2:
[65:18] All right. Fincher, you got me. Claudia is here played by Carrie Enmoss. I hope she got a ton of money for this. She's barely does anything in the movie.

Speaker 3:
[65:28] She clearly didn't get enough because she refused to shave her eyebrows and you can tell. Really bad makeup on those.

Speaker 2:
[65:35] The esteemed Malcolm McDowell plays Leonard in only one scene. I guess they had him for one day, but god damn it, he ate for that one day.

Speaker 3:
[65:42] Yeah, man. He went for it. Very weird to see him in this.

Speaker 4:
[65:47] I didn't even recognize it was Carrie Ann Moss, to be honest.

Speaker 2:
[65:51] She's got a lot of makeup on, which as Jess indicates, not great. And somehow in this version of the story, Vincent is the son of Claudia and the grandson of Leonard, and he's just in the high school with Heather, and they're just hanging out, and they're having a meet-cute, and they're trying to be friendly, and he's just here to help. He's actually like a good kid. He doesn't want to be here.

Speaker 3:
[66:15] Or is he?

Speaker 4:
[66:17] No, he is.

Speaker 3:
[66:19] Well, he was raised in the cult, though, so he was originally sent to bamboozle her and bring her to Silent Hill.

Speaker 4:
[66:25] But he doesn't want that.

Speaker 3:
[66:26] He does a bad job, though. He likes her too much.

Speaker 4:
[66:29] I admit I don't remember a lot of Silent Hill 3, but I don't think Vincent in Silent Hill 3 was ever likeable in this way. He was coy. He was like a Bugs Bunny being like, Or am I?

Speaker 3:
[66:40] He was a little shit. And he is like an older guy who looks ugly and does not brush his teeth. And he's supposed to be kind of like, Don't trust this weird guy. And he's definitely not a romance option.

Speaker 4:
[66:52] Yeah, he's throwing a wrench in what Heather thinks is real and all that shit. Whereas this is he's a heartthrob.

Speaker 3:
[67:00] He's a nice boy. Kit Harrington. Hello.

Speaker 2:
[67:05] I'm in the increasingly small demographic of never watched Game of Thrones. So whenever I watch movies from this era, I always have to find out, Oh, that person was Game of Thrones.

Speaker 4:
[67:13] I'm with you. I didn't know that.

Speaker 3:
[67:17] Not only that, but Kit Harrington, Vincent, played the son of Sean Bean in Game of Thrones. So they are reunited on the set of Silent Hill Revelations 3D. Small world.

Speaker 4:
[67:31] Have we brought up the fact that this is all in 3D also?

Speaker 3:
[67:35] I don't know if we have. It's a 3D movie, folks. Things be flying at you.

Speaker 4:
[67:40] I mean, watching a webcam of it back in the day, in the blurry 3D, just to be like, to say I watched it is one thing. But to watch it now in HD, not in 3D, but still has those stupid camera effects. Oh, boy.

Speaker 3:
[67:57] It's desperate.

Speaker 4:
[67:58] I watched it with a couple of friends because we were talking about Silent Hill, and then we were like, oh, I never seen the sequel. Then we did. One of my friends fell asleep. She was dealing with some other shit, but the fact that she fell asleep made me tired a little too.

Speaker 3:
[68:15] Ended up in a Silent Hill cuddle puddle on the couch.

Speaker 4:
[68:18] Not particularly. One of us was still awake, but man oh man, what a boring movie overall, even for being like a weird 3D extravaganza.

Speaker 3:
[68:28] It's still somehow sleep-inducing.

Speaker 2:
[68:32] Yeah, at some point, it's like nonstop jumpscares, like really, really weird jumpscares. You know, you highlighted a Pop-Tart.

Speaker 3:
[68:39] Yeah, Pop-Tart jumpscare was the scariest part of the movie.

Speaker 4:
[68:43] That's right.

Speaker 3:
[68:43] 100%.

Speaker 4:
[68:44] Fingers coming out at you. I forgot all about that. Just to kill Douglas, who's so stupid.

Speaker 3:
[68:50] Yeah, like they're killing this whole neat character that lasts the whole game for basically four, in order to have a 3D gimmick where his fingers fall off at the screen.

Speaker 4:
[69:01] Yeah, these shuffling around of plot points in all of these movies is like the most frustrating thing, to be honest. It is.

Speaker 3:
[69:07] Because they don't need to be shuffled.

Speaker 4:
[69:09] Especially in Return to Silent Hill when we get there.

Speaker 3:
[69:12] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[69:13] But in this one, Silent Hill 3 deserves so much better than this movie.

Speaker 3:
[69:17] Yeah. Dude, like Claudia turns into like a Cenobite, sexy Cenobite lady.

Speaker 4:
[69:22] That's right. How's that? So Pyramid Head can find her. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[69:25] In a big cross fight at the end.

Speaker 4:
[69:26] He's hanging out. He's just piloting the black fairy, the Ferris wheel or whatever.

Speaker 3:
[69:32] No, he's at the carousel.

Speaker 4:
[69:34] The carousel, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[69:35] His nipples are hooked through as he's doing his carny stuff on the carousel. It's nuts.

Speaker 4:
[69:42] What does he represent in this whole thing?

Speaker 3:
[69:45] Here's the thing. They've recontextualized Pyramid Head in both of these movies to be a protector of Alessa, which is bonkers, and it kind of replaces another character in Silent Hill 3, Valtiel, who is a protector of Alessa and the god, rather. But they kind of dropped almost the entire Summoning God subplot physically, I mean, body horror wise, because in the game, Heather is pregnant with a fucked up little guy, a god of some sort that's going to bring the end of the world, and she doesn't know until a little bit later. But she has a really cool moment where she takes basically a magical abortifacant, and it's real gross what happens. Play the game, it's gross. But it's nuts, it's insane. In the movie, you get to the end of it, and the cult people are just explaining to her like, no, we're gonna do that to you. It's not happening yet, but we intend to. Thanks for coming to Silent Hill. We're gonna do that now.

Speaker 4:
[70:45] Thanks for coming. Thanks. We need you to do it.

Speaker 2:
[70:47] Yeah, there's a ton of exposition. Heather and Vincent have a lot of long conversations about what the cult wants and who they are and where they came from.

Speaker 3:
[70:57] Smooth.

Speaker 2:
[70:58] And Claudia gives a speech about what she wants to do. Yeah, you're gonna get work to this god. Yeah, Dahlia comes back.

Speaker 3:
[71:04] Rose comes back. And she like explains stuff. And she explains that you're the good part of Alessa. She's pure evil, pure evil. You're the good part. Like, okay. My brain.

Speaker 2:
[71:16] We get the...

Speaker 3:
[71:17] Why is Rose in this for a half second? God damn. It's boring too.

Speaker 2:
[71:21] Face turn, boss fight, lots of things. Yeah, lots of things getting chopped off and flying the screen, swords pointing at this. This is 2012, so it's like, Avatar made a ton of money, so it's the 3D Silver Age, I guess. Oh, absolutely. Everyone has a 3D movie and they have to be visibly 3D to be the obnoxious point. It's just, okay, fine.

Speaker 4:
[71:42] Yeah, when you can't have any, it's so cheap. I liken it to Friday the 13th, part three, which was in 3D, and I watched that not in 3D, and there's a part in the beginning of Friday the 13th where a man is accidentally pointing a stick at the screen, going like, what'd you say? And it's supposed to be like, whoa.

Speaker 3:
[72:04] It's coming at me.

Speaker 4:
[72:05] But it is otherwise a boring part of a movie.

Speaker 3:
[72:08] I feel like the only movie I've seen that was made better by being in 3D was Saw 3D, which came out in 2010 because those movies are stupid and you know what's even better? A 3D gimmick on something already stupid. It was great.

Speaker 4:
[72:25] That's what I did with all the Marvel movies of this time. Go watch them in 3D, take an edible.

Speaker 3:
[72:31] Barf.

Speaker 2:
[73:04] I would say that critics and audiences this time around were less receptive to Silent Hill Revelation.

Speaker 3:
[73:09] Crazy, I know.

Speaker 2:
[73:11] It did not make much money, it did not make much sense, and seemingly that was that. I think MJ Barrett is still working on other projects, oh, sorry, MJ Bassett, pardon me. I think they're still working on other projects, but as far as I can tell, Silent Hill just kind of like, okay, well, that was that. And let's be honest, it's 2012, so Silent Hill in general kind of entered its dormancy. I was like, oh, well.

Speaker 3:
[73:34] Big flop era. I think that was when a whole bunch of the crummy ones came out, right? There was a month where three Silent Hill games came out that nobody wanted. It was Book of Memories, Downpour, I think.

Speaker 4:
[73:48] Downpour, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[73:49] And there was a third thing, and maybe it was the movie came out the same month or something like that.

Speaker 4:
[73:53] Was Homecoming around this time?

Speaker 3:
[73:55] No, Homecoming was before Downpour. I think that was 2008 or something. But yeah, they're a pretty big dry spell for Silent Hill, and then all of a sudden get three things in one month. They're insane over at Konami. Why are you doing that, guys?

Speaker 2:
[74:10] Oh, I forgot about Travis Grady. I forgot. Travis Grady shows up and literally says, hello, my name is Travis Grady. I'm here to drive a truck.

Speaker 3:
[74:17] From Silent Hill Origins, the prequel game.

Speaker 4:
[74:21] They sequel bait three different Silent Hill games.

Speaker 3:
[74:25] Three sequel baits.

Speaker 4:
[74:26] Two Origins and Downpour with the prison bus. You're like, you don't even see who's in the prison bus. You just see a prison bus go by.

Speaker 3:
[74:33] Into Silent Hill.

Speaker 4:
[74:34] When South Downpour begins. It's very flicking like, make up your mind before the movie ends.

Speaker 3:
[74:40] Like, what is a film anymore? Is it just like stuff that happens at us that reminds you of other things?

Speaker 4:
[74:47] They were the head of the game.

Speaker 3:
[74:48] I guess so.

Speaker 2:
[74:52] So then nothing happens for a long time. And suddenly, something happens. I don't know. I'm very unclear as to how this all came together. But I guess Christoph Gans never gave up hope. He's like, no, I must make Silent Hill 2 into a feature film. Maybe the pandemic happened and he said, oh, now's my chance to strike. So this year, the year we're talking right now, 2026, we have Return to Silent Hill and Return of Christoph Gans. He's the director again. And even more than the first two films, this one is promised to be a literal adaptation of the second game.

Speaker 3:
[75:31] A faithful adaptation of Silent Hill 2.

Speaker 2:
[75:34] And it's...

Speaker 3:
[75:36] Because as we all know, the story of Silent Hill 2 is a guy walks through a forest, then he goes to a tunnel, then he goes to an apartment building, then he goes to a park, then he goes to a hospital, then he goes to a hotel. That's what happens.

Speaker 4:
[75:52] He just goes to places.

Speaker 3:
[75:53] Faithful, faithful. He goes to those places. What else do you want? He went to those places in the order he went to them in.

Speaker 2:
[76:03] It's just so bizarre. And again, I read someone's quote this week saying how it was somehow brave for Return to Silent Hill to not treat the source material because it's like, oh no, it's okay to change things in the source material. Of course you're allowed to change the source material. That's what adaptation means. But it's like, it's one thing to change things. It's another thing to rewrite entire sequences and make them worse. That bugs me. That bugs me as a human being.

Speaker 3:
[76:30] What bugs the hell out of me and absolutely fascinates me to be a fly on the wall during the production of this. But what wigs me out is that it feels like- Oh, yeah, that too. Really bad wigs in this movie, god damn. Party city caliber. We got Timu ass beards. Oh, it's amazing. Oh, he has.

Speaker 4:
[76:53] I forgot.

Speaker 3:
[76:54] The world's worst Jacob Geller cosplay in this. That really crappy beard. But-

Speaker 2:
[77:01] Jacob Geller.

Speaker 3:
[77:02] Oh my god, what the fuck was I saying?

Speaker 2:
[77:05] I'm sorry.

Speaker 3:
[77:07] Oh man, I got derailed by wigs. Forgive me. So the thing that wigs me out is that the way this film functions, it kind of implies a knowledge of Silent Hill 2. And it implies that they played this game and saw all these things and went, let's take this thing and change it. Let's take this thing and change it. Let's take this thing and change it. Like it feels on purpose. Like every single iconic part of this game was mucked with for no reason.

Speaker 4:
[77:41] That makes me appreciate the game all the better, watching this jumbled up mess. To be like, you could have done the least amount of work and let Silent Hill 2 be Silent Hill 2 and would have had a great movie. Because it's a solid fucking story to begin with. Yes.

Speaker 3:
[78:00] It's a stand alone.

Speaker 4:
[78:01] To change all this shit is like, what, who do you think you are?

Speaker 3:
[78:05] Yeah. How fucking dare you, Monsieur?

Speaker 4:
[78:08] All you've done between this is some Beauty and the Beast adaptation. Not even the Disney one, just some other bullshit. Like I was telling a friend about this and had to be like, don't watch this movie. Don't even play the remake, which is fine. Play the original PS2 game, because that's a solid fucking game. It really made me appreciate that whole thing, watching this freaking movie.

Speaker 2:
[78:33] You know what it reminds me? Jess, you and I and your husband talked about Silent Hill 2 remake a few years ago when that was new, and we all really enjoyed it. But I remember that Josh particularly highlighted the point that when you see Silent Hill 2 on the PlayStation 2, when you see Pyramid Head for the first time in the original game, he's kind of in the background behind those bars, and it's like you kind of see him, but you kind of don't, and it's creepy.

Speaker 3:
[78:58] He just stands there menacingly.

Speaker 2:
[79:00] As Josh pointed out in the remake, that happens again, and it's mostly faithful, but lighting wise, he's a lot clearer, and it's easier to see him, and in Josh's opinion, it's a lot less scary, because you get a better look at him.

Speaker 3:
[79:15] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[79:16] The movie, they're in the hallway, you have the bars, and Pyramid Head comes charging forward, and busts open the bars, and growls or screams or something.

Speaker 3:
[79:29] Roars, he's roaring, and he's headbutting and wedging his pyramid through the bars. I just wanna ask, where did Pyramid Head's dignity go? Because he used to have a scary dignity to him, and that was what made him scary. It's like he didn't need to debase himself and become a boogity boogity monster to scare the fuck out of you.

Speaker 4:
[79:50] Maybe when he became such a funny Konami mascot putting that Track and Field DS game, or make him like a Bomberman helmet.

Speaker 3:
[80:02] They just keep doing Pyramid Head dirty, and I'm just like, why? Leave him alone. This is the one he's supposed to be in.

Speaker 2:
[80:10] And you this up?

Speaker 3:
[80:11] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[80:12] Why did you fuck this up?

Speaker 4:
[80:13] This is the one he's in. Kristoff just want his little fingers all over this thing.

Speaker 3:
[80:19] Mom, yeah, Kristoff.

Speaker 2:
[80:21] I think twice, I think twice they do this. They zoom into the helmet and show what looks like James's own eye. And then later on in his angry loft, because now James is a cool painter who smokes weed. James has a self portrait and he gets drunk or angry and he starts painting a pyramid head over his own head. It's like, are you listening audience? Do you want me to tell you what's happening here?

Speaker 3:
[80:52] Yeah, like there's really like not only no respect for the source material, but no respect for the viewers, the audience here, like they must think we're dumb as rocks, man. This is ridiculous. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[81:36] We've skipped over an important fact. Up to the point we talk about actors, we have to mention the actors here. So James, the coolest guy ever, James, is played by Jeremy Irvine, who I'm pretty sure is English. Right, he's English?

Speaker 3:
[81:49] Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 2:
[81:51] He gets a letter from Mary, played by Hannah Emily Anderson. Excuse me. He gets a letter from Mary. They rewrote the letter, of course they did. And he goes to look for Mary, right?

Speaker 4:
[82:02] You don't even get that she's dead until halfway through the movie.

Speaker 2:
[82:05] No, again, a bizarre change. Why would you change that?

Speaker 4:
[82:10] Really dumb.

Speaker 2:
[82:13] The famous opening of the game, a dead person can't write a letter. It's like-

Speaker 3:
[82:17] That's the fucking hook, idiots.

Speaker 4:
[82:20] Yeah, now I'm here. Now let's play this game and figure out where my dead wife is.

Speaker 3:
[82:25] By doing this, it makes James seem like he has legitimate brain damage. He doesn't know anything, but in Silent Hill 2, he at least knows his wife is dead, and he knows that it's weird that he's doing this, that he's going to Silent Hill because of all this stuff. He explains it to other characters like, I know it sounds crazy, I don't know why I'm doing this, but I really believe this and I got to find out. It's just like, this James has none of that.

Speaker 2:
[82:52] And another major change, which I can almost understand, except I don't, Hannah Emily Anderson plays all the other adult women in the movie. So of course you have Mary and Maria, but she also plays Angela. And she also seems to play more monsters. I don't think I have to act like I do the monster stuff. Again, what thing would she-

Speaker 3:
[83:16] She plays like Moth Mary, final boss.

Speaker 2:
[83:18] Yeah, yeah. What thing would she also give credit for? So a lot of these movies have really sketchy CGI. However, however, most of the creatures like Pyramid Head and the nurses and just the freaky stuff, most of those roles are played by real people, dancers, contortionists wearing weird freaky makeup. And that stuff I think holds up beautifully. It looks amazing, I wouldn't say it's well used. I know at one point, I think it's the first, I forget if it's the first or second movie, but at one point someone just walks into a hallway and there's a dozen nurses just standing there and it's kind of like, okay, we're in the nurse hallway now. And it's just weird.

Speaker 4:
[84:00] I think that's the first one. And that's a good, here's the nurse scene. And it's just all the nurses sort of like, beep, boop, boop. And that's very well done. Even though there's like, why would you have the sexy bobblehead nurses in the first one? Okay, I know why, nevermind. So it's still a fun scene.

Speaker 2:
[84:21] In that regards, they do still have that here. There are still some creatures in this new movie, which is not a good movie, but there are still moments of this movie where you see an actor doing a weird freaky monster thing and you're like, oh man, that's an actor going to town as a weird freaky monster.

Speaker 3:
[84:38] Love it. I do enjoy that they employ contortionists and dancers and things like that. That's a good call. One of the few things you gotta hand it to them about.

Speaker 2:
[84:48] But, but, and I'm saying but so many times for a reason, but then you have stuff like this spider monster who's-

Speaker 3:
[84:58] With a big ass.

Speaker 2:
[84:59] A huge, a lusciously sculpted ass that the camera cannot get enough of. Oh my God.

Speaker 3:
[85:06] A big spider. A big spider.

Speaker 2:
[85:09] Ooh. You know-

Speaker 3:
[85:10] What does this mean psychologically, James? What kind of shit you've been watching?

Speaker 2:
[85:15] For 2026, we've also got a brand new Resident Evil game, and that's got a giant spider boss that also has a giant rump, but like it's a spider rump.

Speaker 4:
[85:24] It's not a sexy ass.

Speaker 2:
[85:26] The Return to Silent Hill is a spider monster with a human- A human shapely lady ass, and it is-

Speaker 3:
[85:33] With jiggle physics on it.

Speaker 2:
[85:35] Oh my God.

Speaker 3:
[85:36] Good Lord.

Speaker 2:
[85:37] Oh, wow.

Speaker 3:
[85:38] What is happening in there?

Speaker 2:
[85:41] Which of course, Pyramid Head immediately starts fighting with. They have a little like a tussle.

Speaker 3:
[85:46] Yeah, instead of doing like the really iconic scene where James is in the closet and he's seeing Pyramid Head like in action for the first time, seemingly fucking a monster or something, or at least it's supposed to evoke that. Yeah, instead of that, they just like have this spider booty monster wrestle with him a bit and then Pyramid Head punches it in the kidneys and the ass and it dies. And James is in the closet going like, oh no, he's going to do that to my ass, no. And then he opens the closet and they scream at each other as the siren goes off and the editor goes wild.

Speaker 2:
[86:24] More screaming.

Speaker 3:
[86:24] Gives people seizures.

Speaker 2:
[86:26] We all love when Pyramid Head just goes in and delivers soliloquies and screams a lot. We love this. Evie, Evil Templeton is there who played Laura in the video game remake. She's here playing Laura again. She is British.

Speaker 3:
[86:42] Yes, true.

Speaker 2:
[86:43] But as with so often the character, almost every character in this movie does not do anything. So many characters appear and just disappear. Eddie, you know, KC made a joke earlier. Eddie appears, delivers a few lines and is never seen or heard from again.

Speaker 4:
[86:58] No, he's the happiest ending. He like he doesn't even look like Eddie from the game. No, he's just some long haired hippie going like this sucks. Bye.

Speaker 3:
[87:07] Yeah, he's on screen. I counted for less than four minutes and it's like, why? Just take him out entirely. Why are we wasting four precious minutes that could be spent on adapting the video game?

Speaker 2:
[87:18] Maria, Maria is barely in this movie. She dies and that's it. She doesn't come back, which is like part of the weird part of the game. I saw you die. Well, no, I'm here. I'm real here. Touch my boob. Like, no, what?

Speaker 3:
[87:32] Yeah, it's one of the biggest misunderstandings, I think, of the movie makers here is that it's important that James sees this fake woman die two, three times in front of him. Really, really important that he sees that actually.

Speaker 4:
[87:50] He's got more fake women to deal with, like Angela. They did her dirty in the movie. They did Angela real dirty in the movie. Just be like, no, it's just a section of Mary. Who cares?

Speaker 3:
[88:00] Upsetting.

Speaker 4:
[88:01] Like the grave reveal that Mary's full name is Mary Laura Angela Crane. Crane.

Speaker 1:
[88:11] They changed her last name, too.

Speaker 3:
[88:12] Why did they change her last name? They changed everything. Stop it.

Speaker 4:
[88:15] It's so, so dumb.

Speaker 3:
[88:19] I don't even know where to... I've all scattershot with everything that's wrong with this. That's why I'm making a fucking way too long video about this.

Speaker 4:
[88:26] Eddie, Angela, Crane.

Speaker 3:
[88:28] Yeah, why no Eddie, huh? Sexist, that riot guns, no Eddie, part of the tombstone.

Speaker 4:
[88:33] Maybe that's James Middlename.

Speaker 2:
[88:35] Thick Spider.

Speaker 3:
[88:36] James Eddie Sunderland. But yeah, what a disservice to every single character, but especially the female characters, and it just continues Gans' unfortunate mishandling of female characters in these movies. And like, here's what's crazy, I found this while doing research for this video I'm doing, but there was an interview with Gans about this movie, and he mentioned that he found it interesting that so many people online don't know that Angela is part of Mary, and he just keeps talking, like, that's a normal fact. He doesn't know that Angela is a real separate person in that story, he literally thinks that Angela is like Maria and is a fictional character, and I'm just like, oh my God, they let him make a movie about a thing he does not understand a key component of, good Lord.

Speaker 4:
[90:07] They did it once.

Speaker 3:
[90:09] This is absurd though, not knowing Angela's real is like, are you sure you played that thing? When? How tired were you? I just can't.

Speaker 4:
[90:20] He's a fake gamer. He's a fake gamer.

Speaker 3:
[90:22] He's a fake gamer, okay, guys? Get him.

Speaker 2:
[90:26] I think to me, the single dumbest change for me in the entire film, which says a lot. No, I'm sorry, second.

Speaker 3:
[90:37] How can you choose?

Speaker 2:
[90:38] The first one is what we already talked about with the fact that they don't mention Mary's dead until the movie is almost over. Oh, by the way, Mary's dead. What? No. The second dumbest thing in the entire movie is that they change the end of the movie because they give you an in-water ending. We saw the game, we know you want the in-water ending, so here's an in-water ending. Then they swerve into what I can only assume is either time travel.

Speaker 3:
[91:05] Time travel.

Speaker 2:
[91:06] It was all a dream or something.

Speaker 3:
[91:08] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[91:08] It jumps back to the beginning of the movie where James meets Mary at the rest stop area where the game, they do that whole, they have a meet cute in the movie, and then the movie ends, and then they do the meet cute again, and James is like, perhaps this time, I will live my life differently. Let's go, Mary.

Speaker 3:
[91:29] I'll do it right this time.

Speaker 2:
[91:31] I'll speed off, and Kiriyama will do the plays.

Speaker 3:
[91:33] In the opposite direction. In the opposite direction of Silent Hill. Meanwhile, all the things that's gonna happen to Mary are gonna happen to Mary anyway, because in this movie, she's part of the cult, she's really important, she's a figurehead-ish thing in rituals and all this stupid bullshit. Since she was a child, she's been poisoned, so even if you meet cute her again and do this over, she's still gonna die of poison later. What?

Speaker 2:
[92:00] I have an important question. I have an important question. There is a weird scene where James basically peeps in on Mary as part of this cult scene. Are they eating Mary?

Speaker 3:
[92:13] They're licking her. They're licking the hell out of her. They gave her a potion that's poisonous that I think makes her sweat blood. That's the best I got on what is happening there. Then they take the yummy, yummy blood and they lick it and they put on their hands, and it's what the god damn Christ is going on.

Speaker 4:
[92:34] Another addition that didn't need to be is bringing the cult back for this movie.

Speaker 3:
[92:40] Yeah, this is like the game with no cult in it, thank God. You're going to do this to it.

Speaker 4:
[92:45] Just a ghostly town.

Speaker 3:
[92:47] Come on. What the fuck, dude? It's like they played the game and when we're going to subvert everything that the game does. It's the anti Silent Hill 2.

Speaker 4:
[92:58] I forgot about the ending. It went back in time. A part of me can set that aside almost to be like, maybe it's heaven, maybe it's the afterlife.

Speaker 3:
[93:08] It's a death dream, a dying dream.

Speaker 4:
[93:10] Yeah. That's how he goes away, kind of like a lost or some bullshit.

Speaker 2:
[93:15] Doesn't play that way.

Speaker 4:
[93:16] Doesn't play that way. But to think of it as time travel is just too stupid for me to be like, that can't be the case. Maybe he's just dead and that's that. At least the movie is over. I can move on with my life.

Speaker 2:
[93:31] But speaking of dead, actually, I guess this might be the second dumbest thing. Mary begs James to kill her. She says, please kill me.

Speaker 3:
[93:38] How dare you?

Speaker 2:
[93:40] Please kill me.

Speaker 3:
[93:40] How fucking dare you? Oh my. That's the number one for me. You didn't understand this game whatsoever. Because the entire narrative core of it is that you don't know James' motivations for why he killed his wife. Was it he just snapped after caring for her as she was getting worse and worse, and he's like, fuck this, I'm out. I'm going to kill my wife. Or was it a mercy kill? Was it euthanasia? We don't know. And honestly, your favorite ending kind of tells you how you feel about James, what he deserves or not. Does he deserve to be forgiven? Does he deserve to die for this? Does he deserve to repeat all of his actions until as a punishment forever? And like making it so clear that Mary was just like, pretty please kill me please. And James was like, okay, boo hoo, and does it.

Speaker 4:
[94:33] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[94:34] Hashtag James did nothing wrong. Why is he in Silent Hill? He's just sad that he killed his girlfriend, but she asked.

Speaker 4:
[94:41] He got a girlfriend. Not wife. That's right. They were never married.

Speaker 2:
[94:45] They didn't marry. There's no stumbling on the tombstone.

Speaker 4:
[94:50] Another dumb change.

Speaker 3:
[94:51] Oh, my fucking God. How dare you?

Speaker 4:
[94:54] We really got to make this guy seem like a nicer man.

Speaker 3:
[94:57] Right? Why are we laundering James' reputation here so much?

Speaker 4:
[95:02] Also, he's cool. He's a painter.

Speaker 3:
[95:04] He's cool. He's super cool. It's weird how they made the male character so much better and cooler and free of sin basically, did nothing wrong. All the lady characters are really fucked up and also the same woman. They asked for it. Oh my God, dude.

Speaker 4:
[95:24] I can't wait to see what he does with the room.

Speaker 3:
[95:29] How bad can it be? It's a room.

Speaker 2:
[95:32] Speaking of Christoph Gons, I have a quote here from a Euro news interview. He says, this movie is a proposition. It's just a companion for the game. It's absolutely not the official adaptation. It's my adaptation and it's something that I put into the forum. Respect Gons, take it back. We don't want this.

Speaker 3:
[95:53] My jaw is on the floor. How fucking dare you? Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining, Christoph. This is bullshit and you know it.

Speaker 4:
[96:02] You know what's the official adaptation of Silent Hill 2? Is that Smiling Friends episode that Pyramid shows up in for four seconds.

Speaker 3:
[96:13] Good Lord.

Speaker 4:
[96:14] What a whiny baby.

Speaker 2:
[96:16] And it's just- Mon Dieu. I say this as someone who's a relative newcomer to Silent Hill fandom, I guess. I've always admired it from afar. But the first game I ever played in this series like actually played was the two remake. So like, I, but I really enjoyed it. I thought it was a really good game and I know these games have a lot of like reputation. I'm not like, I don't have like decades of these ideas in my head. I just think, oh, these are really cool games. And I came to this movie, it's like, well, obviously there'll be some changes. What do they do with this? And I watched this movie and I'll admit it to say, I stole this movie. Okay.

Speaker 3:
[96:55] Oh, yeah, same.

Speaker 2:
[96:56] I stole this movie.

Speaker 3:
[96:57] They didn't screen it. They didn't, it didn't come out in Finland.

Speaker 2:
[97:01] It is coming.

Speaker 3:
[97:01] Which I assume was for my health.

Speaker 2:
[97:03] It will be opening in Japan at some point, but not in theaters. It's gonna go direct to streaming. But I stole this movie and I watched it and I was still like, I was still angry. Like if I had paid to see this, I would have been furious. It's just terrible.

Speaker 4:
[97:17] I had an opportunity to possibly do it because I saw the movie poster at like my local cinema. But for some reason I was like, I didn't look at it close enough. So I was just like, are they re-releasing the original Silent Hill? That's kind of interesting. Completely forgetting that they did return to Silent Hill. I just wasn't paying attention until it was already too streaming.

Speaker 3:
[97:39] Luckily, you didn't waste any money on it.

Speaker 4:
[97:42] I mean, I've wasted money on worse. But yes, hurry for me.

Speaker 2:
[97:49] So we'll see what the ultimate tally is. Obviously, the critical response was dreadful. Critics immediately said, no, this sucks.

Speaker 3:
[97:58] This movie has a worse IMDB rating than some fan made movies of Silent Hill.

Speaker 2:
[98:04] I'm sure. I don't buy it. I don't believe that. I don't doubt that for a second.

Speaker 3:
[98:08] Oh my God.

Speaker 2:
[98:09] Box of Us wise, I guess it's too certain to tell. They obviously spent almost nothing making this movie. It did not open well, but who knows? It's still open. They haven't put it out there. Maybe they'll make more money and they'll decide to make another one. I don't know, but if you look at pure numbers, I feel like each Silent Hill movie has returned less and less and less, and maybe they're spending less, so maybe it works out to be more money to them in their coffers. But to me as a viewer, I just find that each film just seems to stray further and further from what I even want to look at or think about or know exists. It's just like-

Speaker 3:
[98:52] Every day we stray further from Sam Ayel's light.

Speaker 2:
[98:55] Yeah. I think one reason I wanted to make this podcast, I had to get these feelings out so I can just let them go. It's just such an insult to the movies, not even to the video game. This is a movie. You had a story to tell and this is the story you chose? This is a terrible story.

Speaker 4:
[99:14] Silent Hill deserves a little better. I mean, a game made from the movies that they tried to do it again, just going in circles. I do hope he makes The Room. To talk about the future of it, I think The Room is one of my little favorites because it's such a goofy story and such a weird take on that. I'm like, that's novel. I like that. If he does it, I'll be there. I'll see it.

Speaker 2:
[99:48] Well, he's on the record. He's on the record. He says he loves The Room. Yamaoka. Yamaoka says he would love to see Silent Hill 4, The Room, the movie.

Speaker 4:
[99:57] I bet you that's as good as in the can then. I bet you that's as good as coming out.

Speaker 2:
[100:01] I can only hope they keep the burping nurses. That's all I can say.

Speaker 3:
[100:05] Talk about faithful.

Speaker 2:
[100:06] Give me a stairway. Give me a stairway. One nurse, a stairway and just let the magic happen.

Speaker 3:
[100:12] Popcorn. I'm good.

Speaker 4:
[100:13] Yeah. Give us the big head of Eileen.

Speaker 3:
[100:17] Eileen, yes.

Speaker 4:
[100:18] She goes through so much shit. Kristoff Gaines would love to do this.

Speaker 2:
[100:21] Oh, he would love that.

Speaker 3:
[100:23] You're right.

Speaker 2:
[100:24] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[100:24] Just put her just like she's fallen down the cliff like Homer Simpson.

Speaker 3:
[100:28] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[101:00] So, the movies, especially the first two, came out when the games were still sort of being made to a degree. And I do think, again, much like Resident Evil, the success of the movies and the audiences for those movies in turn inform the people who make the games a little bit. Now, in the case of Resident Evil, I think it was a little more subtle at first, although there were some definite obvious takes, like Resident Evil 4 has that laser sequence that is just 100% taken from the first movie. But I think the fact that these movies came out when Konami internally was kind of done with Silent Hill, they already started farming the stuff out to overseas studios to varying degrees of quality. I think number one, everyone could decide, well, we got to have more pyramid. Pyramid Head is now the guy to be in every Silent Hill. Maybe we don't call him Pyramid Head, maybe we call him the Boogeyman, like clearly we have to have the pseudo game and have a big muscle guy with a funny hat on. It has to be here. Maybe he's the protagonist. Maybe the protagonist turns into him in a special ending.

Speaker 3:
[102:10] I love Silent Hill Homecoming. It is so bad. It's good. It's like a mystery science theater thing to me. Because it was written by two guys who were sci-fi original movie writers, and you can tell. It's hilarious. It's a dogshit game, but hilarious.

Speaker 4:
[102:29] I remember more about that than I do Downpour, save for like, I think Bob did a fun edit of the mailman fucking around with the guy. But that's all I remember about Downpour beyond that is a lot of water.

Speaker 2:
[102:42] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[102:42] Downpour was very bland, and it had an open world with nothing to do with it, which is very weird. And it so almost had something to say about the criminal justice system in America, but it was too scared to say it. What if the cops don't like it? The demographic of the cops that play Silent Hill, I don't know, like, why not?

Speaker 2:
[103:06] Just do it.

Speaker 4:
[103:07] Cops are gamers too.

Speaker 3:
[103:08] Cops are gamers. Like, I don't understand. So close yet so far. They fumbled the ball there. But yeah, like, more Pyramid Head, tons of more cult stuff, confusing-er cult stuff.

Speaker 2:
[103:22] Oh, God. Homecoming is... Homecoming is the whole family thing? That's so weird.

Speaker 4:
[103:26] That's just weird. I never could follow that. It's hilarious. Because it wasn't Silent Hill. It was the town next to Silent Hill.

Speaker 3:
[103:32] Yeah, Shepard's Glen.

Speaker 4:
[103:33] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[103:35] It was basically, to sum it up very, very, very quickly, like, a couple generations ago, people from Silent Hill wanted out. And to break the lease with their other world landlord, they had to do rituals and, like, ritually sacrifice their children to break the lease, basically, and to make a new town somewhere. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[103:55] Interesting.

Speaker 3:
[103:56] Hilarious. Super funny. Dumb as hell. Not very Silent Hill-y at all. And then you've also got, like, the other world transitions happening in front of the protagonist's eyes with the skin walls peeling. And stuff like that. That kind of wasn't a thing until movies did it. And Centralia, Pennsylvania is just kind of seeping into stuff because, like, Homecoming has enemies dressed as miners, which, by the way, I think this is the first time you're killing human beings in Silent Hill. Like, definitely people.

Speaker 2:
[104:28] Sick combos. Fatality.

Speaker 1:
[104:30] Yeah, he was in the army.

Speaker 3:
[104:33] There's miners in that, like in the first Silent Hill movie. And there's, like, also, like, steam coming out of the streets, like, there's a fire happening underneath the place. It's like, okay, guys, stop it. And Silent Hill Downpour has a big, like, cave mine level with a ton of lore. And this is like, there is, like, a coal mine in Silent Hill that's mentioned, like, once ever in Silent Hill 2, in, like, the historical society. There's, like, a picture of the coal mine. That's it.

Speaker 4:
[105:03] That feels like it was, like, a happy accident for the Japanese developers, that when they, when they found that out, they were, like, we can? And then just kept adding more, and we're like, oh, that's cool. That's great.

Speaker 2:
[105:13] Wow.

Speaker 4:
[105:14] Wow.

Speaker 2:
[105:15] But I would argue these days, certainly, if the recent film is any indication, the games are in a much, much better place than the movies, and I don't think, I don't think the upcoming townfall feels particularly beholden to any cinematic adaptation. I think they're going for their own story. They clearly want to do Silent Hill in Scotland, and okay, I'm on board with that as a concept, by all means. God of Silent Hill.

Speaker 4:
[105:43] Silent Hill F was great. I enjoyed that, save for not getting the good ending. I was doing the, not to spoil anything, but I was looking at the Jizo statues that you had defined for the second playthrough and the first playthrough going like, I wonder what you do here? You know, kept going because I couldn't do anything.

Speaker 3:
[106:03] You got to wait.

Speaker 2:
[106:05] I love a Jizo. Sorry, I live in Japan, the Jizos are everywhere. I love the Jizos.

Speaker 4:
[106:11] That's why I was so fascinated because I was like, this is more of the thing, not all the Fox stuff, but now we're getting to Silent Hill F.

Speaker 2:
[106:46] Well, we've reached about the time of a Major Motion Pictures runtime, so why don't we go ahead and wrap things up here by obviously, I don't think we're gonna be surprising one, but by all means, let's rank these movies. So, KC, you first, how would you rank these films?

Speaker 4:
[107:03] The first answer is very carefully, because they're all kind of bad. But honestly, it's easy, because Silent Hill 2006 is the most watchable and best out of all these three, which isn't saying much. It's a three out of five. Silent Hill, Return to Silent Hill is bad, but like funny bad in like a watchable way, you know, in that kind of like schlocky way. Revelations 3D, I really was having a hard time. Like I was just, I was as tired as my friend who fell asleep. And I was just like, this is just isn't interesting. We don't even get the 3D aspect of seeing everything this stuff. It's just not good. And also, I just really like, I'm repping Silent Hill 3 right now. I got Heather Mason shirt from FanGamer. It's Wishes Princess Heart. And that game, I replayed that recently or like the past five years and was like, man, that is a solid game and deserves much better than this fucking movie, that fucking movie.

Speaker 3:
[108:09] All of them deserve better than any of these movies. Yeah. Just on a technical level, best of the worst is the first one. For me, it's declining as it goes on, but it's also in a reverse way. I would also rank this the opposite way around where somehow Return to Silent Hill is the best one because of make fun of potential and B-movie stuff and how dumb it is and those bad wigs and that beard that's just glued on to Jeremy Irvine's face. It looks like garbage. It's funny in places and does not mean to be. And I think also Revelations is funny in places that there's a birthday clown jumpscare. There's tons of goofy-ass shit in that movie. And it becomes more normal and sober as you go back into the past. So it's like, I don't know, I've got many minds about how to rank such things. I abstain. I'm wimping out of a real ranking.

Speaker 2:
[109:16] Well, in my opinion, I kind of like the first film. I actually can watch the second movie and just sort of like let it glaze over me. I, it's fine to me. Like it's not, it's not a good movie, but I still find it tolerable. Whereas I never want to watch Return to Silent Hill again. So to me, it's a straight decline for me.

Speaker 4:
[109:40] I just really also enjoyed Three as a game. So I was just like enamored with Heather Mason. And so I just, I want, she deserves a better movie than that. All of them do. Yeah, like I said, but absolutely. That's why I like, that one's like the lowest for me.

Speaker 3:
[109:54] I don't know. Thank goodness Gans didn't have his hands on that one though.

Speaker 4:
[109:57] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[109:57] It could have been worse.

Speaker 4:
[109:59] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[109:59] An actual cool female protagonist. I don't know. That seems kind of masculine to me. We should kind of, maybe we should gender swap that. I don't think audiences will understand such a thing.

Speaker 2:
[110:12] And now let's play everyone's favorite game, Hollywood Fantasy. So what if, what if you were the person to make the decisions? If you could say, hey, I want you to make a Silent Hill movie, who would that be? Give me, give me a pick for a choice filmmakers. I want you to direct a Silent Hill movie, if that exists. Or do you not want more, are you done with Silent Hill for movies, Frank? That's also a fair choice. I don't want movies anymore.

Speaker 3:
[110:38] Well, I think I would prefer it be somebody I don't know. Have it be, I would, I want it to be like kind of like an A24, like elevated horror sort of thing. So like just do one of those things and get some director that I don't personally know and has like, doesn't have any baggage associated with them for me or anything like that. And real answer would be Jordan Peele, because he's just very good at this stuff.

Speaker 4:
[111:03] Oh, there you go. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[111:05] Got a track record. Absolutely.

Speaker 4:
[111:08] I think a good answer, even though I don't think he would do it. For one, because he's dead, and for two, because David Lynch doesn't always do commercial stuff. But I think he would have made a fun one. If just let like do Silent Hill, it's about a town that traps people haunted by their past. And he goes, I've already done that. And then go back into his grave. Jordan Peele, that's a good one. I recently watched the movie Undertone.

Speaker 2:
[111:39] Undertone?

Speaker 4:
[111:40] Yeah. It's about a girl caring for her mother in her house, and she's making a podcast. So it's a very podcast focused movie, which is like, come on. But it does play with a lot of sound about all the noises an old house makes, is my mom really comatose kind of horror? And then when she puts on her headphones, it kind of muffles and suddenly you're just hearing her talk to the friend, but maybe there's a muffled footstep behind you or... It plays with sound very well in a way that's like, maybe Silent Hill is good with sound. You need good sound in something like that.

Speaker 3:
[112:18] That's true.

Speaker 4:
[112:19] I don't know the director off the top of my head, but I enjoyed that. Ian Tuason.

Speaker 3:
[112:29] His directorial debut too.

Speaker 4:
[112:31] Well, it was a decent flick, I got to say.

Speaker 2:
[112:34] Filipino-Canadian. All right.

Speaker 4:
[112:37] Bring him in.

Speaker 2:
[112:38] I'm intrigued. You can put that on my list, definitely.

Speaker 4:
[112:42] Maybe a Japanese director. I don't know. I would think about the guy who did these direct-to-movie horror films about people finding cryptids and stuff. I forget their names. They have big titles.

Speaker 2:
[112:59] Oh, Koji Shiraishi.

Speaker 4:
[113:01] That's the guy.

Speaker 2:
[113:02] That's the guy. Yeah, Noroi.

Speaker 4:
[113:03] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. His stuff is definitely more, like Noroi is great, but a lot of it is like found footage, first-person stuff, so I haven't seen a lot of, he has done a couple, but I haven't seen a lot of just straight, not found footage type stuff. He might be fun, and he definitely loves a lot of the creepiness, otherworldliness of certain things, but he's also building his own weird.

Speaker 2:
[113:28] Has Silent Hill gone the found footage thing? I mean, aside from James' videotape.

Speaker 4:
[113:34] Maybe that's next. That'd be kind of interesting.

Speaker 3:
[113:38] Yeah, I don't think it has.

Speaker 4:
[113:39] I mean, Townfall is not found footage, but it is first-person, seemingly correct. We got a video camera. PT could have been it, but bring fucking... I would have slapped Konami around and said, let Kojima do what he wanted to do.

Speaker 3:
[113:54] Let him cook.

Speaker 4:
[113:55] Let him cook.

Speaker 3:
[113:57] Also, Masahiro... No, Junji Ito, the other Ito was pinned to that project too. Let them cook.

Speaker 4:
[114:05] Let them cook.

Speaker 3:
[114:06] Come on.

Speaker 4:
[114:07] That's probably like the real answer is like, if we could have done it, we could have let bygones be bygones or slapped Konami and told him to shut up, let Kojima do his thing. I mean, we're lucky that Resident Evil took that and was like, all right, we'll do our own thing with seven.

Speaker 3:
[114:24] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[114:25] But what we could have had with PT.,

Speaker 3:
[114:27] whoo. Well, a different timeline.

Speaker 2:
[114:31] If I'm going to pick a name out of a hat, I would say Cronenberg. I feel like David is working less these days, but his son Brandon is making some really supremely weird creepy movies. He's probably the right age to have played a video game at some point in his life.

Speaker 4:
[114:50] I'd give it to Brandon. Brandon Cronenberg?

Speaker 2:
[114:53] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[114:53] I'd give it to him over David because I don't know if you saw The Shrouds, his last...

Speaker 2:
[114:58] Not yet. No.

Speaker 4:
[115:01] It's personal in a way that's not interesting to watch.

Speaker 2:
[115:04] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[115:06] I won't say anymore, but I was like, that felt like a really personal thing that I didn't need to be in a theater for. But yeah, Cronenberg, he rules otherwise.

Speaker 2:
[115:37] Anyway, that's enough for our little fantasy segment. Let's wrap things up here. Thank you very much for listening to Retronauts. We really appreciate you. If you listened to this podcast and you didn't pay us any money, thank you for listening to Retronauts. However, if you don't mind, we have Patreon, patreon.com/retronauts. For $3 a month, you get all our episodes one week early, higher audio quality. For $5 a month, which is just $2 more than the $3, it's really, you know, what's $3 and $5? Is it the same number at this point?

Speaker 3:
[116:10] Yeah, $3, $5.

Speaker 2:
[116:11] Yeah. $5 a month, you get bonus episodes two, sometimes three, depending how many Fridays there are in a month. You get weekly columns from me, and I read you the columns, so it's like a little podcast for your ear holes. We do community podcasts, Jess has been on them, I'm on most of them, Stuart's on a lot of them. They're always fun, we just hang out and talk about what's happening in the news. And Discord, all we do in Discord is talk about what's happening, that's all Discord is. So I encourage you to try that. We have higher tiers where you can get to tell us what to make the show about, or be on the show with us. But all that is there for Patreon. KC, you are the newest person to the show as far as I'm concerned. Tell people about your internet life or what you liked. I'm stammering, sorry.

Speaker 4:
[116:59] That's okay. I'm KC Green. You can find me online. I mean, I'm the cartoon guy. I'm the this is fine guy. It's hard to tell who knows and who doesn't. Yeah. But I do like still making comics and I do do one often called Greeters. You can find that it's creatures with a G. You can find that at greeters.com. You can find me on Blue Sky. Twitter sucks, so no. Instagram is pretty good. And my Patreon also, patreon.com/kcgreen.

Speaker 2:
[117:29] KC, I forgot the title, but I saw one of yours comics that was all about a cat and a mouse, and like each entry just got weirder and weirder. What was that called?

Speaker 4:
[117:40] That was called Me and You.

Speaker 2:
[117:42] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[117:44] It was like a weird thing I did started during the pandemic, where it was a idea of slapstick, like the yin and yang of slapstick through a cat and a mouse that constantly had one against the other, but the setting kind of changed. So if the mouse moved on to do something else, he would be at the mercy of a cat, and then we follow the cat, and it would be at the mercy of the mouse, and it would just keep going flip-flopping over and over with no real editing in between. It would just be like a long story. That was fun for maybe 100, maybe 200 pages or so before it dropped off and I stopped doing it. That's so many. You're so prolific. I know. I promised myself, and I feel bad about it because I promised myself that I'd do at least 400, because the idea of the story was that this could go on forever. That's the point of the whole thing, but I only got as far as I think just under 200 before I just stopped updating it. But it's online somewhere or if not, I should put it up online. That's on Patreon if you want to go check my Patreon and all the me and yous on there.

Speaker 2:
[118:52] What I saw of it was really amusing. Thank you very much.

Speaker 4:
[118:55] Thank you.

Speaker 2:
[118:57] Jess, people know you, but go ahead, remind them.

Speaker 3:
[118:59] Yeah, hi. Well, technically goodbye since it's the end of the podcast. I am Jess Voidberger O'Brien. You can find me. My SEO has gotten worse because now Voidberger is a Roblox ship.

Speaker 2:
[119:13] Oh no.

Speaker 4:
[119:14] Oh God.

Speaker 2:
[119:16] You've been hijacked by the Roblox.

Speaker 4:
[119:17] I'm so sorry.

Speaker 3:
[119:18] Damn it. It's a very- They should send you checks. It's an obscure ship. It's like a crack ship, but Voidberger is, I did it first, okay kids? Okay, 11-year-olds? It's me. Maybe this is good for my SEO. Maybe I'll get a whole new demographic of 11-year-olds.

Speaker 4:
[119:34] Yeah, you'll get kids being like, what is this?

Speaker 3:
[119:37] Who's this annoying lady? I won't shut the fuck up about Silent Hill. But yeah, voidburger.com. There's a whole link tree of stuff there, but I am also on bluesky, voidburger.com also, patreon.com/voidburger, the whole shebang.

Speaker 1:
[120:00] I'm also a YouTuber and streamer. Guess what my name is? It's Voidburger on all those things. I said last time I was on one of these that I was making a video about Sam Barlow, the creator of Her Story and Immortality and stuff like that. But then Return to Silent Hill came out and I had to, I'm compulsed to make a video on that instead. It's been a lot more fun than the Barlow one, so I'm enjoying it. Look out for that eventually.

Speaker 2:
[120:27] All right. Well, if that's up by the time this podcast comes out, I will of course link to it and share it.

Speaker 1:
[120:34] It's going to be a while. It's going to be long. I saw how much I'm passionate I was on this podcast. Just imagine if I have all the stops out or whatever.

Speaker 2:
[120:46] Well, as for me, Diamond Feit, you can find me on the internet by looking for Fight Club. That's my little nickname. F-E-I-T, that's my last name. C-L-U-B, that's a blunt instrument you might find in many Silent Hill game. I have website, fightclub.me. Social media is Fight Club. Letterbox is Fight Club. Go ahead, look me up there. Patreon as well, if you want to pay me some money. I appreciate it. I could use some money. That's it. I didn't have an outro joke, so I guess just we'll sing some credits, some credits music. And then low deep voice.

Speaker 3:
[121:30] Good night. One of these has got to end with the UFO ending. That would have been some big dick move.

Speaker 1:
[122:05] Yeah, when's the movie with the UFO ending? Let's go.

Speaker 3:
[122:08] Yeah, if Kristoff just had the dog ending or whatever, instead of this, that would have forgiven. That would have been a five-bagger. I would have forgiven the whole movie if the dog was there. That would have been a five-bag of popcorns movie. Never, we'll never see a sheba on the big screen.

Speaker 1:
[122:27] They don't respect us as audience members enough to give us that. They would change it to be a cat. This seems like a cat thing to do. Control the whole town evilly.

Speaker 3:
[122:39] That's such cat energy.