Silent Hill: Restless Dreams

Review by L8wrtr — August 31, 2010 @ 9:15 pm

Finally got to this last night. I don’t want to rehash everything that has been written previously. The highest compliment that I can give Aztek on this is simply this, you don’t feel a single edit. I could find not a single sign that this movie had been altered. Every transition was great, no tell-tale audio issues, no visual continuity mis-matches, nothing No plot holes left from removing the sub-plot. The result was a movie that fully engaged me. The pacing was excellent and really pulled me in.
I love that he created two endings. I’m not a fan of the Blue ending, but I like that he included it for those that want the movie to go that direction.

If this is a sign of things to come from Aztek463, I cannot wait to see what else he gives us!

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This is the first fanedit I have watched before seeing the original film. I am vaguely familiar with the Silent Hill franchise, but even though I am a horror fan, I missed this when it came out. So...seeing this edit blind, I can say I really enjoyed this film experience. It was like Fantasia, but in the horror genre. There is a lot of really weird, unexplainable stuff that goes on. This is good. It almost never happens that one can sit back and just let their draw drop. I'll have to watch my DVD of the original now; I hope I will not be disappointed.

I really loved this tightened up version of the movie, but looking at the Change List of your cuts vs what I just watched (for example, you said you removed the miners beating Cybill and that you removed Chris entirely but these were both in what I saw) I'm a bit confused as to whether I saw the right version.

Regardless, I really enjoyed the movie! I've seen the original 5 or 6 times over the years and always thought it was one of the best game adaptation films. This really trimmed the fat, and I didn't even notice anything missing.

The only glaring edit for me that confused me was removing the nudity before the skin-rip, which was confusing because without seeing him grab her skin and twist it, it made me think he threw her clothing at the door but they were covered in blood in 2 seconds flat somehow. It was a bit strange.

Outside of these points, the edit is fantastic, the runtime is great, and I will keep this for my movie collection, so it gets a near perfect score from me!

When the director of the original film gives praise to a fanedit and says this is how he intended the movie to be originally, then you know you did something right. I have the blu-ray and he says exactly that in an interview in the special features. For those of you who don't know the story, the director wanted the film to be something like this one here, without all the Sean Bean scenes. The studio insisted that he added a male character. Well, he did, but he made the movie pretty long on purpose in order to bluff the studio, making them tell him to cut the runtime and then he would say, well, guess what, I can only cut the Sean Bean scenes, and ultimately get what he wanted. But the studio called his bluff because they loved the "extended version" and that was it. (To be fair the director wasn't talking about Aztek's edit specifically, but Spence's, but it's the same principle)

I was a big fan of the Silent Hill game and I was also a fan of the theatrical version of the movie. It's not without its problems, but it was a pretty good video game adaptation.

Technical-wise the edit is great. I couldn't tell if any given scene was tampered with in any way and the removal of almost all the scenes were good choice. But, as another reviewer said, the ending is not that good. I found it a bit abrupt and didn't have the impact that the theatrical one had.

Otherwise, this is definitely recommended, the movie is more focused, more well paced and there is also the bonus point that this what the director originally wanted to do!

Thanks to anyone who read my review and thank you Aztek463 for your hard work!