Squirrelly's Horror Corner

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Allow me to start by saying in no uncertain terms that i adore this game. I do. I intend to talk about all of this in the back end of my review. The aesthetics, the sound design, the animation, the plot. All incredible. 10/10. I would have given this game a higher score on that alone.

But there is an elephant in the room I MUST address and it’s: the game handles like ass in combat. Which would be fine! I’ve played games IN THIS FRANCHISE with jank ass combat (lookin at you SH1). Fatal Frame had similar jank ass combat and long ass recovery animations. I can live with that.

What I can’t live with are two things and it’s why my review can’t be as glowing as I would like. One: too many mechanics for the type of thing you’re selling me. A silent hill game doesn’t need a stamina stat, a sanity stat, weapon durability, limited inventory, AND timing-based counters and dodges. It really doesn’t. You could pick 1-2 of those to keep and have a significantly better game. Like, I didn’t even use the counter system after a point. I just stopped caring. Silent Hill is not and never has been an action game. It’s a survival game. Which brings me to two: UNSKIPPABLE non-boss enemies.

The fuck do you MEAN I can’t run past this monster that’s not a boss during this ending sequence. Literally nothing took me out of the game harder than that forced combat while chasing the fog monster. Like, if it was narratively significant like ALL THE OTHER INSTANCES of forced combat before it I’d forgive. But it fell short of that for me, all 4 times I did it.

NOW THAT THAT ELEPHANT IS OUT OF THE ROOM

Let’s talk about how awesome this game is.

Because it genuinely and truly is an incredible narrative experience. Terribly prescient and delightfully executed. I was absolutely DELIGHTED the whole way down. (Legit the ritual sequence had me screaming in all caps at my group chat. The aesthetics! The narrative!) The writers really captured what Silent Hill is in essence; battling your inner demons through a setting of personalized metaphor. It gives layers. It gives complexity. It gives a cast of deeply flawed and oftentimes terrible young people. It gives a metaphysical god-plot on par with the OG cult.

It’s also a very heavily gendered game. It’s an incredibly feminine game; in that it is a game about being a girl and the inherent violence faced as a result, which makes every review I read calling it “angsty teen drama” or “plotless” sound like a manosphere dogwhistle. Because it’s not those things.

It’s a plot about a girl desperately wanting to be able to make her own life-altering choices without feeling like she’s making them to cater to someone other than herself in a society that tells her that her happiness hinges on obedience and appearances. It’s a game about autonomy and choice. About confronting internalized abuse. About how love changes you in monstrous ways, sometimes too much and too quickly. About balance and patience and making peace with yourself, your grief over a lost childhood, and your fear of the future.

So the people calling this game plotless can gtfo.

Having a game like this come out in this current atmosphere on social media is such a huge move too. But that’s a meta for another day. This is a review.

Silent Hill F is just beautiful to look at. It’s well lit with a lovely set of color palettes in the town; appropriately dim and moody in the shrine. The monster designs are visually arresting and work well in service to the story. It leans heavily into its setting to gorgeous effect. It’s smooth and cinematic. No complaints.

Akira Yamamoka’s presence is really felt in the sound track and I’m so glad he was on for this. I feel like having that auditory familiarity helped with the transition between settings from the original American-set Silent Hill, to this new one.

It was a slow build but honestly it was pretty good. There was always a part of my brain that was like “there is an American version of this movie that’s a comedy played for laughs.”

I can’t say I loved it. It was lacking in a lot of ways. The dialogue was stilted at best and not in a super interesting way. It might have even been better served as a short film. It was due a lot of edits.

I wasn’t mad at this one. It does a lot of fun things and the actors are wonderfully intense, especially Leo and Mathias in later portions of the movie. There are some very fun set pieces and the premise is decent. I love the use of color grading to depict objective reality vs play

But it was also just… mid. A bit repetitive at times and the core premise is good, but the impetus for the actual plot we follow is… bleh. Very rote.

Okay but seriously holy fuck this was a good one. Like genuinely. It gives independent arthouse film. It gives mainstream descent into madness. It gives animation.

The use of sound and color to show different states of mind hit so good.

I don’t even really have any complaints about the child actor. The visuals were appropriately bizarre and horrifying.

It really resonated with that feeling of not knowing what to do with yourself after finally breaking free of a toxic relationship, especially with a parent. Trying to find a place now that you have the freedom to do so but not having any idea where to start, where to go, what to do, and just losing your shit about it. It gives resentment. It gives frustration. it gives fear.

It’s a very open sort of movie, and I suspect it won’t be for everyone between the violence and the visuals, but I personally enjoyed it immensely.

A feast for the eyes if you’re into the grotesque.

Or tool’s music videos.

This one was kinda mid. The red herring was kind eh. It was one step shy of being a Christian movie, and the payoff lacked punch.

Like Act 3 was pretty solid, but the rest of it was “meh”. Not boring but not particularly challenging or risk-taking. It didn’t lean in far enough and the tragedy of it didn’t hit.

It has the bones of a good dust bowl movie. A good family annihilator movie. And a good suspense film. It just doesn’t put any meat on those bones or do anything fun with them.

Which I guess makes sense for the dustbowl.

I watched this one a couple weeks back with a friend and I was 1) unfamiliar with the source material and 2) stoked to see Christopher Lloyd in a movie from 2016.

Honestly? I was surprised by this one. I didn’t have a lot of expectations going in but it did some very fun things. I’d wanted to hold off long enough to break down the midwestern gothic elements with my friend but that feels like it’s going to end up needing its own post.

It does cinematography so well, the use of color and no; the conveyance of time is great. The writing is solid and the acting is fun to watch.

I did often find myself going “THAT’S BECAUSE YOU’RE A BAD MOTHER” periodically but honestly I think it added to the film. But that might just be me.

So I watched this one YEARS AND YEARS ago and have, much like other movies I'm reviewing for the queue/back catalogue, the details escape me now and I take that to mean I'm due for a rewatch.

What I do remember is that the vibes of this movie were incredible. It gave Modern Noir Clue meets Cult Indoctrination meets The worst People You Know Host A Bougie Dinner Party vibe. Logan Marshal Green is fantastic in it (but I love him in everything I see him in so I might be biased.)

This.

This is a movie.

I'm not going to sit here and pan it because of what it is. It's honest about what it is. "We're gonna sew three people ass to mouth. This is what you signed up for." And you get exactly that.

It is shock jock horror. It is a cocaine-addled fever dream. It takes itself just seriously enough that it feels earnest but not so seriously that it's constantly trying to justify itself or pretend to be something it isn't.