The Conjuring

Silent Hill 2 is next up, but since I just saw this I figured I would get this one out while it was still fresh.

The Conjuring 2013

Based on a true story...uh huh...

Ok this story may be along the same lines as The Entity (a favorite of mine) when it comes to being based on a true story and if that's the case I'm picking up my cross collecting habit again just in case. After seeing the movie I had almost changed my mind about the Warrens. Then I read up on the "true story" The Conjuring is based on and I went right back to my former way of thinking.

Now I respect Ed and Lorraine Warren for doing what they do, and I believe that they believe that they are doing good. However seeing this movie and looking into the happenings and aftermath makes me shake my head. I know better than to mess with certain things and there's a reason I don't watch too many possession movies.  It's too real for me. These events are things that could and really have happened. SAW is fake and awesome. The Exorcist (as I've already explained) freaks the fuck out of me!!

******Spoilers*******

Now some of the things I found out about the real story were quite interesting. The family isn't really sure how the Warren's came to know about their story. There was another paranormal investigator who came to know the family named Keith Johnson who had his own experiences in the house prior to, and since, the Warren's did their thing. Keith stills talks to the family and still visits the house. He says he thinks that the Warren's may have heard about what was going from someone in his group but isn't sure either.

The family lived in the house for a decade. Right after they moved in they start experiencing things but things didn't get really bad until a couple of the younger kids were playing with a Ouija board. It was after this that the spirit of what they think was a woman named Bathsheba came through and started torturing their mother. Now minus the Ouija board that whole thing is in the movie. The story behind Bathsheba told in the movie is pretty much word for word what the family found out about her.

There were other ghosts in the house besides her and the little boy in the movie. While the house was active the cellar and the barn on the property were the major hot spots. The current owners still have experiences now but nothing near as bad as what the Perron family went through.

The story that starts the whole movie is a story from the Warren's archives about a doll named Annabelle that becomes possessed and tries to possess them. The doll in the movie is this freaky looking thing right out of the movie Dolls. The real doll is a Raggedy Ann doll. Which makes me very happy I don't have one floating the house anywhere. Throughout the movie we see Annabelle in her locked glass case with a sign that says "absolutely do not open". You don't have to tell me twice.

We see the Warren's house a few times and we see their room of terror where they keep all the items they've collected over the years, including Annabelle. Ed tells a reporter we have a priest come and bless the room once a month. My question is who's going to take all these items after Lorraine dies? Are they going to someone who can keep them safe and/or the general public safe from the items? I think about these things so you don't have to :)

There's a line at the end of the movie that did make me laugh though. Ed is putting the music box from the Perron house in their room of terror and Lorraine pops in at the top of the stairs after speaking with the priest who is their go to guy "there's a case in Long Island he wants us to look into" meaning the Amityville case. The itty bitty cameo by the real Lorraine Warren also made me giggle. They guy next to me looked over at me like what is your issue so I told him and then he giggled too.

Over all I enjoyed the movie. I like Lily Taylor anyway so it was fun watching her be possessed and nuts. Like I said I'm not a fan of the Warren's, but this was a cool story and an interesting version of events. I'm on the hunt for copies of the books at some of my local used book stores. Go see the movie it's a good scare and even got me to jump a few times. You really start to feel for the poor family with everything you watch then go through.

Night kids!
Lola

Silent Hill: Part 1

Silent Hill - 2006 Part 1

Silent Hill : Revelation 3D 2012 Part 2
(So much Silent Hill goodness it couldn't be contained to just one post!)

*There are spoilers galore all over this thing so I would say go watch the movie or skip to the synopsis link then come back to the top and read away*

Since a friend is borrowing my Texas Chainsaw dvd I'm going to do Silent Hill for this post. I'm going to attempt to not devote my whole post to saying "that was in the game and it was so geeky awesome that it was in the movie too" for both of these, but that's going to be hard.

The History of Silent Hill-backstory: 

Back in the day there was a little console known as Playstation. It was a tiny little grey box that opened my eyes to the new revolution in video games, Crash Bandicoot!!! Yeah I was a sucker for those titles. Anywho, there was also a game that I wouldn't become aware of until much later in my gaming life, called Silent Hill. Now the big thing about Silent Hill was the graphics. Namely the fog. It was all encompassing and  made you as the player not be able to see a foot in front of you or see what was coming at you, so basically it worked like fog should! At the time it was high tech gaming graphics man!

After the first game came sequel after sequel that for once designers didn't change much and the players didn't bitch about what did change for the most part. Some die hard fans will tell you Silent Hill 4: The Room is the bastard step-child of the sequels and even most non-die hard fans will agree, but they still played it because it had the Silent Hill name. I haven't given it a chance yet so I won't comment on it either way. What I will say is that I've played scary games and I've played games that claim to be scary and all the Silent Hill games that I've played are scary and awesome!!!

 Hollywood moves into Silent Hill-It's a movie: 

Now I had heard through the wonders of the internet that someone had purchased the rights to the game series and wanted to make a movie. I had not played any of the games at this point, but knew of them and how creepy they were. When the trailers finally came out and on set photos started showing up it caught my interest to say the least. I went on a hunt to find the original games for my still worked when it wanted to PS2 and at that time was SOL. When I found out the the Borg Queen, Alice Krige, was starring as the big bad of the movie I was even more into it. I wear my Trekkie stripes proud people. 

I credit the first Silent Hill movie to starting my love affair with Sean Bean dying as well. But he didn't die in this movie you say? I know but it made me aware of the fact that he dies in practically everything I've ever seen him in up to and following Silent Hill (Game of Thrones and LOTR ring a bell?) I had no idea who Radha Mitchell was so I had no preconceived notions about her. Although now I always go oh that's the mom from Silent Hill. Anyway, I was very excited to see if they would be able to pull off the creepy feeling of Silent Hill that at the time I had only heard about.

The plot thickens...nope it's just the fog or ash whatever- The story:

The basic plot of the movie is loosely based on the game. The game is centered around Harry Mason who takes his daughter Cheryl on a vacation in the harbor town of Silent Hill. I guess the writers thought a mother/daughter story would be better for the general movie going public? The movie follows Rose (Mitchell), her husband Christopher (Bean), and their daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland also plays Alessa, Sharon's "twin"). Sharon is plagued by horrific nightmares of Silent Hill and is prone to sleepwalking because of them. After a particularly close call (she almost pulls a Gage Creed) Rose decides to take her daughter to Silent Hill and try to figure out why her daughter is plagued by this town. They run into a cop named Cybil Bennett (character from the game played by Laurie Holden {Walking Dead}) who thinks that Sharon may need help and follows Rose towards Silent Hill only to become trapped there as well. As much as I wold love to tell you the whole story here is a synopsis of the movie (oh and spoilers, it's a synopsis duh!) and you can find a full synopsis of the game here. On wards and up wards.

Now there are 2 stories happening concurrently during this movie and it may have confused people who had never played the games or made the simple connection of what the falling ash and fog meant vs the clear skies and sun. Christopher finds the note she left saying "I'm taking our crazy daughter to the town she wakes up screaming about every night to see if it will cure her. Bye honey don't forget to grab some milk." He rushes to the town only to find the gate closed (that his wife blew through earlier) and his way barred. We see many scenes where Rose walks through a hallway followed by Christopher and they can't see or hear each other, but they can sense each other. I thought this was a good story telling device to show that Silent Hill isn't part of our world unless it wants you. 

The actual story is a bit odd at times with how many stories you are treated to. If you're not someone who has the ability to follow multiple story lines in a movie you may get lost at times between what Sean Bean is doing in his world and what Radha Mitchell is doing in Silent Hill and/or Otherworld. Especially at the end. There's actually three different realities you are seeing throughout the movie. The Real World, Silent Hill, and Otherworld. The easiest way to tell them apart is how they look. The real world looks normal, bright and sunny etc. Silent Hill looks like a blizzard of ash and fog, gloomy and grey. Otherworld looks like hell, bloody and burnt. Got that covered right? OK moving on.

That would never happen on Wysteria Lane - Plot aspects that make you go hmmm -

I wasn't too convinced on the cult back story as to why they did what they did to Alessa. She's the bastard child of someone, but because her mother won't name the father the poor kid is labeled a witch and must be cleansed? And that cleansing takes place in a hidden room in a hotel in down town Silent Hill. The cult I know anything about is the cult of personality (great song!!) so who knows what crazy ideas get into their heads, but burning a child to death just because her mom is a slut is a bit out there. Alice Krige plays Christabella, the head of the cult, and she is divinely creepy. When we first meet her we have just watched Pyramid Head rip the flesh off one of her disciples like he was ripping glue off his finger after a heavy day of crafting in grade school. One of my favorite scenes in a horror movie ever. She leads everyone in prayer against the outsiders and says they will get what's coming to them yada yada yada. Throughout the rest of the movie she proceeds to walk that fine line between creepy and well uber creepy all the way until her demise from a one night stand with razor wire. That scene reminded me of the tree scene from Evil Dead (the original and the remake). She at one point figures out who Rose is looking for and sends her people after her and Cybil. It was a total Invasion of the Body Snatchers moment. 

Rose's phone drove me nuts as well. Rose had a Sony Ericsson T200 monochrome brick style phone. That phone was released in 2002-2003 so it was only 3 years old max when the movie was filmed and yet seemed ancient to me for some reason. It may have had something to do with me working for a certain giant pink cell phone company at the time so I was using Blackberries and Windows mobile phones all the time in stead of the basic monochrome phones. The one thing I kept saying throughout the movie was holy shit that phone gets great reception. I don't remember her getting it on the lanyard thing, where it spent the 90% of the movie, nor did I know anyone who used them because you phone became like Flava Flav's clock. It was just weird.

The nurse in the red sweater was another huh? moment. Her whole thing was that she was curious about Alessa while she was in the burn unit. Oh yeah she survives the burning and is brought to the hospital. I had no clue what this character meant in the grand scheme of things other than she was one of the first victims of Alessa's rage. Ok, but....why? Now when I had first seen the movie I had no clue she was so integral to the game. Now I still say she could have been much better character in the movie and knowing that Alessa started to mistake her caring for her as true affection not just a nurse's work makes her eyes make much more sense. 

Is that a Pyramid on your head or are you just happy to see me - The characters:

We see many of the "monsters" of Silent Hill, but none are more infamous in pop culture than Pyramid Head and the Brookhaven/Alchemilla Hospital Nurses. I was very excited to see them in the flesh. One thing I noticed about Pyramid Head was that he has no pants on, at least the actor in the movie didn't, I'll have to play the game again to check that out. The costume was amazing. The full head piece with bloody latex apron and giant sword was beautiful. I highly recommend watching the making of special feature on the DVD. It shows a lot about how they did what they did. For example watching Pyramid Head learning to walk in his crazy lifted shoes and how they got the guy bound in barbed wire in bathroom stall to crawl out (both played by the same actor btw).

The Nurses were what I was really excited about. I had heard about them, and seen screen shots, and seen hundreds of cosplays, but I wanted to see them in the movie so bad. I wasn't disappointed and seeing them react the same way they do in the game was even better. When Rose put her light on them and they started walking the click click of their heels was enough for me. The Armless Man is awesome as well. 

Cybil at first to me was just a means to an end character. A way to bring in a character from the game and have her be a part of the story line and not just a cameo at the gas station. I was ok with that, but she was still just there for me. Then the above mentioned scene happened and her back story was explained to Christopher and I changed my tune a bit. I was more happy to have her in the story and helping Rose after that. It didn't seem like crazy cop follows mother and daughter into strange town because kid had a freak out in front of her and mom sped off. By the end of the movie I liked her, I liked her even more when I started watching Walking Dead and realized who was playing Andrea. 

Alessa/Sharon is not someone I would ever want to meet up with in a dark alley like Rose does. Alessa has 2 incarnations not including Sharon, Dark Alessa and burned Alessa. Dark Alessa is wicked creepy but when she explains who she and Sharon really are and what happened you start routing for her. When Rose lets her come inside her so she can infiltrate the church I kind of had a hell yeah bitch moment. When she's skipping around while Burned Alessa is wreaking havoc she became my favorite character in the movie.  

OMG that's from the game sqee!-stuff that I didn't mention above:

Just before Christabella sends her goons after Rose and Cybil she points to a room on the floor map and tells Rose to memorize the way there. We see a shot of the map and it's styled like the internal building maps from the game. We also see this at the hotel briefly and the bus stop map is set up like the game town map. There are several characters from the game Cybil, Alessa, Sharon (Cheryl in the game), Dahlia Gillespie, Pyramid Head, Straight Jacket/Armless Man/Lying Figure, Nurses, Grey Children, Creepers, and Nurse Lisa. SH: Revelation has way more but that's for another post. I know there's more that just aren't coming to my brain right now. I'll update as I remember them. 

Ok this thing is almost as epic as the Silent Hill series and there's another post for the second game! I will end for now and try not to take as long with the second one. Please rip me apart for things I missed or feel free to add on to the list of game references in the movie.