Silent Hill – The Spence Edit

Silent Hill: Christopher’s Story - Spence

This review is for the bonus feature, following Christopher.

Filesize = 413 MB, Video = 720 X 480p mkv, Audio = 192 kbps AC3, 2-Channel stereo. No Subs.

This focuses on Christopher’s search, or rather his futile search.
The narrative is choppy, the dialogue incomprehensible at times.
Overall, this is frustrating, especially, I imagine, for newcomers unfamiliar with the series. Then this edit will make little sense.
Unless – you regard this as a dream.
Which is what I did midway. Returned to the beginning, rewatched.
That method totally worked for me. Sean Bean’s character is either hallucinating, or is delusional, or psychotic.
True, for other viewers, this edit makes a cheat sheet for a favorite RPC … oops, I mean character.
Good example of a fledgling editor, this work is still available and worth studying by aspiring editors.
Generous of Spence to make his early efforts available. His later efforts are of higher quality, but everyone has to start somewhere.

Review by DwightFry78 — June 6, 2010 @ 8:08 pm

The intention was the correct one. However, the execution left quite a bit to be desired. Given that the Chris sequences prior to Rose entering Silent Hill stay, there’s still too much of him that adds nothing to the story, but that’s the smallest problem. The thing is, there are hard cuts everywhere, particularly in the audio, and nothing that couldn’t have been easily fixed. The removal of the parallel narrative from the school sequence results in a music bit repeatedly looped over the images, and it sounds exactly like that. However, I wouldn’t mind it that much if it weren’t because Chris enjoys a Fight-Club-dick style one-frame cameo in it. Careless. Also, the fade-out-fade-in separating the Sharon capture from the church sacrifice looks too much like a TV cut-to-commercials. There are fades elsewhere in the film, but in those the audio and video fade at different speeds and that helps them work. In the one I mentioned, both fade at the same time, and one half expects an ad to pop up.

A for effort, but I’m afraid this needed much more care in the execution. 3/10.

Removing the Sean scenes and the weird ending really improved the movie. Being pulled out of Silent Hill for real world story, while decent exposition, was very abrupt and off-putting. Really enjoyed the pacing here and really enjoy this edit.

Thanks.

A tightened focus that keeps things creepy and does wonders for the story. The only truly noticeable edit was the ending, simply because the brightness and still shot of the answering machine didn't quite match the movement and color grading of the rest of the film.

Highly enjoyable, regardless.

Review by zeroxdash — August 8, 2010 @ 4:16 pm

*This rating was given before reviews were required*