Silent Hill: Restless Dreams

Review by joethetimelord — July 22, 2012 @ 1:40 pm

*THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS*

First off this was a damned fine edit. It absolutely improved the movie and was a great deal more engaging. While Sean Bean’s removal was unfortunate, it only served to help the film overall.

Audio: 9/10
The corny lines are mostly gone (sadly the “I am the Reaper” bit remained, but I can’t blame the editor for a child’s acting and it did get the point across.)

Editing: 9/10
There was only one moment when it cut away too quickly (the Room 111 scene), but it was more than welcome. Everything else was virtually flawless, including the point where the fantastic endings begin. There were some lines that still needed omitting, particularly in one scene, but I’ll get to that.

Visuals: 10/10
There didn’t seem to be any change here, which is almost never a bad thing. It was definitely DVD quality.

Presentation: 9/10
The DVD menu and boxart were simple and effective.

Entertainment: 9/10
While the acting isn’t necessarily Oscar-worthy, it’s far better than in the official release. The removal of the “real world” scenes maintained the tension by trapping the viewer within the hellish hamlet. Overall it was a scarier experience.

My only problem was Alessa’s narration during the hospital flashback. It could have been trimmed more or removed entirely. It’s way out of character of the series to flat-out spoonfeed information the way Christophe Gans did and little was done to circumvent it effectively in the third act (I don’t hold that against you; there’s a fine line between too much information and too little and it’s an incredibly tough call). I’d invite anybody to watch that same flashback on mute, however, and take note that the lack of flat-out narration makes the whole thing a bit more unsettling, while still effectively illustrating what essentially happened. The only thing that wouldn’t make sense was the second Alessa, but that really didn’t make much sense in any release of Silent Hill, narration or no.

Overall: 9/10
The whole movie was a hell of an improvement. While it’s still not quite on the list of great horror films, Restless Dreams does fit on the list of good ones. That deserves nothing but high marks.

There isn’t much to add what MonsterCow said. He hit the nail on the head. This is a far superior version to the original release. While still not a scary film it is much more fluid and intelligible.

With that said my only gripe is the “blue ending”. Without trying to spoil anything I didn’t much care for it. Aztek mentions this is for those who are familiar with the game, and that it’s open for interpretation, but this sort of ending in any movie (or book, or television show, or game) is a cop-out. But thankfully there is the “grey ending” which, to me, is more satisfying.

Entertainment: 9
Picture: 8
Sound:10
Overall: 9

Mostly really solid. I'm more familiar with SH2 but regardless this edit tells a pretty simple but effective story. I think it adds more Yamaoka score but I could be wrong. Only real issue with the edit is one kinda jarring cut to Cybil looking at a hotel key and saying "a hotel". Also the flashback stuff is a bit jarring but yeah it's still well done. The quality is a bit compressed, there's some audio peaking and the video is fuzzy but it's not a dealbreaker. Overall this is a great edit and was even enjoyed by someone I showed it to who'd never played the games, so mission accomplished.