Movie Appraisal: Pulse (Kairo) (回路) (2001)

Pulse (or Kairo) is an incredibly melancholic Japanese horror movie released in the early 2000s. While it is not much of a technical majesty by any means, it relies on mood, atmosphere, and characters and situations that an average person can easily relate with. I cannot say that this is that scariest or most horrific film of all time, nor can I say that this film really scared me all that much at all. What I can say is that the entire film is unsettling, and that's really all one needs in a great horror movie.

And you know what? This movie, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, delivers on every front. It is a great horror movie, not precisely because it's scary or it made me urinate myself from fear... but because it is both unsettling and unforgettable. See, I've watched a great many horror films over the course of my life. (I have to point that out here to make my ultimate point.) I've watched horror films from all over the world, from any decade you could name. I've watched monster movies, slashers, gore films, psychological horror, drive-in horror, B-movies, space horror, and all other kinds of films besides. Very few stick out in my mind, and very few stay in my mind for years after I've forgotten even the name of the movie. But Pulse stuck in my mind. It stayed there like some kind of mental brick. I had seen this movie years ago, probably while I was still in high school, but possibly before even that. And I remembered certain scenes in it, but the ending specifically stood out... the ending and the final scenes in the abandoned factory. And for years those scenes stuck in my head without a name to attach to them. I had forgotten what this movie was called, but the story, the scenes, and the scares stayed behind. Very few movies have done that.

For instance I can look through all the movies I've reviewed over the course of two-and-some-odd-years, and I might remember a scene or two here and there. Hell, maybe I could even name them simply because I wrote about them, but before this blog existed, I was just a dude who liked horror movies. Invariably I would forget some of them. Hell, I've forgotten many more horror movies than most people have even watched. But Pulse stood in my mind. Sure, the title of the film was entirely forgotten, but the content certainly wasn't. And so now I'm revisiting this film years later, ready to talk about it, review it, and tell my impressions to any that would read them.While this movie is not perfect or wonderful or even good looking, it works as exactly what it is, and it remains memorable because of that.

I have to mention that I searched for the name of this film for years, simply wanting to see it again, but never remembering what it was called. I, completely accidentally, watched a "scariest horror movie clips" kind of video on YouTube a little while ago and recognized a scene from this film, saw the title, and whooped with joy. Then I proceeded to track this movie down by any means necessary. I still have a few movies like that, movies stuck in my head without names to them, and maybe someday I'll find them too... until then though, this is a success story for the past.

Pulse is a fine movie by the way. Its parts are better than the whole of it, and taken alone some of the scenes could be quite terrifying. But as a whole the movie kind of loses its terror. All I could see while watching it was a social commentary rather than a horror movie, and that was an absolute shame. If I could take my head out of why this movie was made and look at it on the merits of the plot and characters alone I could really see this as an effective horror movie. Try as I might though, all I could see was social commentary using ghosts. A heavy hammer seemed to pound thoughts into my head... thoughts like: "The Internet isolates and makes people lonely and terrified, ghosts within their own houses," "The culture of Japan seems to be so focused on work, school, and things that aren't people, and that relationships, friendships, and love in general are lacking to an extreme degree," and mostly ""If the world keeps moving in this direction, the world will be as good as empty, each person committing a social suicide, being stuck to a computer forever rather than with people, caring and helping and even dying as they ought to." Those are the comments I kept seeing with every scene. There were comparisons between the living and the dead, but it was saying that both the living and the dead are both dead... dead, cold, and lonely... so what does life even matter if there are no relationships, no meaningful meetings, nothing but strangers and websites without names?

While I think it's an incredibly astute commentary, it hits like a steel beam. There is no real subtlety there, and also no real point but to stick a middle finger at the technological world. It makes an interesting tech-ghost story into something with meaning, yes, but it kind of takes the fun out of the whole thing, which is a bit of a negative. The characters don't matter.... and neither do their struggles... since the commentary is first and foremost what can be, and is, seen. I find that disappointing even if it doesn't take anything away from the movie. Most people watching it probably just watch a kind of creepy apocalyptic ghost story, and good for them. I'm glad that they can enjoy the film without seeing too far into it. As for me, the film was more mediocre. It didn't really do anything I haven't seen before. The ghosts were sometimes creepy, but never scary. The music was sometimes out of place. The sounds and voices never quite worked for me. And the characters never truly felt real. I couldn't imagine most of them outside of this movie, hanging out with friends or going to a movie, playing a video game or just screwing around on scooters or something. They were too self-contained within this movie, and that is the biggest negative about this film. I wanted to see some life in the characters or the story or something... but I never felt anything. I never cared about the characters or the story. The only thing I truly cared about, thought about, was the social commentary, which, while interesting, does not a great movie make.

So, I'm contradicting myself, saying that this is a great movie and not a great movie at the same time. And that kind of sums up my thoughts of this film. I loved the creepy aspects of this film. I loved how technology (and a creepy ghost within that technology) was shown as this evil and malignant force that could easily overpower any person. I loved the ghosts and the people fading into a dark stain upon the walls. The suicides were incredibly well done, specifically the woman who jumps off of the side of a building. That looked amazing. And I loved a lot of the idea of ghosts being just as real as the living. That concept and execution worked so well it made the entire movie worth watching for that alone. The story itself was complex in its own right as well, but not precisely as confusing as many comments seem to think of it as. The whole story is there, but some things are simply not told to the audience. I think the movie not showing its entire hand is not a bad thing. In fact, I liked that about the movie as well... the fact that there were still mysteries within this universe.

This movie was made when the internet was still not quite the monster and behemoth it is today. It was still big and used for many things, but it wasn't as practical, nor was it quite as easy to find all the information you could ever want. Chat rooms were the standard for talking to people online, forums were getting off of the ground, but the internet as a whole was still this undiscovered country. Very little social media existed, and certainly nothing like Twitter or Facebook or Reddit or Tumblr. Nothing that could so easily encompass all of your social and practical needs all in one website. Isolation was what computers were for. They were for putting you further from society, not linking you up... but that's not true, is it? The internet is used to connect us all together... but not together at the same time. We are always separated by a great curtain of space, and those who frequent the internet are nothing more than the norm now. Looking at that student, the main male character, Ryosuke, who had his first experience with the internet ever... so much so that he didn't know what "bookmarks" were, well, that just doesn't happen in society today. We're born knowing more than we could ever effectively use about technology... and yet more frequently we find ourselves not understanding each other, becoming more and more isolated from the very people we think we are getting closer to by using the internet. Okay, I should stop my diatribe on today's culture. Let me just finish this paragraph by saying that if that were my first experience with the internet like it was Ryosuke's, seeing creepy people on the internet and a dude with a bag over his head before I even had my entire internet hooked up correctly, I'd need a smoke too.

Ultimately the movie succeeds at doing something. I don't know if I'll ever be able to say what. Maybe I simply love the ideas presented in the movie and that's it. But maybe it's something more. The movie looks creepy, not crisp and sharp, but muddy and always dark. The sounds are off. The music doesn't fit. Unsettling is the word of the day for this flick. The use of sound (or lack thereof) is also very well done. It both unsettles and startles without the movie itself having to do much at all but exist in the background.

This is a hard movie to review and a hard movie to rate. I have no idea if I should recommend it or not. I enjoyed watching it even though some major parts of the film are incredibly flawed. I think it is one of the creepier Japanese horror movies even though I was never scared. And I think it is incredibly effective even though it is overlong. If you like social commentary in your horror movies, this is a good one to watch. If you like a creepy ghost movie without any social commentary, you might like this film too though. Just turn your brain off. As for Japanese horror, this is one of the best I've seen, easily up there with Noroi. So, I guess check it out if you find all this 3-5AM ramble-writing-dissecting-reviewing interesting. Or not. I liked the movie well enough. It still is a great movie even if it isn't perfect.

Movie Appraisal: Kakashi (案山子) (Scarecrow) (2001)

 "We co-exist with death here."

Despite the overlong introduction this movie delivers in its atmosphere. Kakashi is both moody and well directed by Norio Tsuruta, even if the story and characters are rather flat. I had a good time watching most of this movie, but I did find it, as I've found many of these movies over the last few months, predictable and without any real horror, even boring at times if I may be so bold. The terror, the horror, the fear... they kind of didn't exist in this movie. I found any kind of scariness literally lacking here, which was a disappointment on the interesting premise of this film. Again, most of these movies have great ideas, but they are simply executed poorly. Kakashi is better than most, but it still has the exact same flaws even if they aren't quite as apparent. One of the biggest flaws is that this manga story "Kakashi" or "Scarecrow" is a much better story than this film version to the point where I don't see why that unsettling idea was scrapped in favor of this story.

Kakashi is based off of Junji Ito's manga short story named the same as mentioned above. Ito also helped to write the screenplay of the film. The manga is quite a bit different, with the scarecrows being kind of an accidental thing after one is placed in a graveyard by a father to try and scare away a young man who was in love with his daughter who died. In the manga their sentience is also questionable at best and it is left open to the reader to decide whether they were "alive" at all or just projections put on to the scarecrows by the people who lost their loved ones. Overall the manga is a much better and more effective story, but is quite a bit shorter and with even flatter characters overall. Boy, oh boy... what I wouldn't give for a strongly characterized horror movie. It's bad when all of these movies have such archetypal and flat characters. I can't stand it. I can basically just predict what's going to happen and what characters are going to do. It's actually kind of boring. Horror movies should not be boring. That's really bad.

Anyway, the movie starts off with a girl, Kaoru, looking for her missing brother, Tsuyoshi. Kaoru is your standard quiet Japanese girl. She is quiet. I mean, REALLY QUIET. Almost unsettling so. She asks some questions and does eventually get a little pissed off, but is mostly ineffective and just too quiet throughout the film. I never could identify with her as a main character, never could say, "OH BOY, I LOVE SCENES WITH KAORU!" She was simply boring. Boring. Boring. And a little uninteresting to boot.

Anyway, it seems that another girl named Izumi has sent a letter to Tsuyoshi, telling him to come to her town to meet her. Okay, interesting premise, I guess. Tsuyoshi goes missing and Kaoru feels the need to look for her brother, which makes sense. The beginning of the film is actually effective. It has very little dialogue and relies on the atmosphere to tell the story. Kaoru goes through a tunnel to the out of the way town and her car breaks down, eventually leading her to the creepily quiet village and some strange people who all are carrying around scarecrows. She also sees a young woman who was thought to be missing named Sally, but the woman disappears before she gets a chance to talk with her.

Eventually Kaoru ends up talking to Izumi's parents, learning that there is something wrong with her. Izumi is an old classmate of Kaoru who seems to have had some sort of relationship or feelings for Tsuyoshi. The stilted dialogue between every character works at making the movie feel unsettling, but also works against this moving at slowing the pace down quite a bit. There is never really any intensity to the dialogue, and I honestly found myself nodding off a few times during the movie, which is never a good sign.

The way that Izumi's mother seems to detest Kaoru and Izumi's father seems sympathetic if a little gruff does work well, even if it seems like another standard trope. Izumi's father (played by Kenzô Kawarasaki), who seems to run the clinic, is easily the most sympathetic character in the movie and he is also quite probably the best actor here. Kaoru ends up staying a few night at Izumi's parents' house and has some pretty intense nights, either because of some pretty odd dreams or because her brother and Izumi are doing some pretty strange things at night. It's hard to tell what's fact and what's fantasy at this point in the film. A quotation that happens fairly often in the film is "Is this a dream? Or a fantasy?" and it really does pick up on the idea that the film and the town itself seem to take place somewhere outside of any reality. It's a pretty neat idea, but it's execution is a bit spotty.

Anyway, eventually we get into the meat and potatoes of the movie: the zombie scarecrows. Yeah, it's kind of silly, but also strangely effective in a boring and kind of average type of way. I'm reminded of other towns that are made up of weird people like The Shadow Over Innsmouth and "Children of the Corn." It's a worse story than either of those, but the sentiment is still there, which I appreciate. So, these zombie scarecrows try to stop Kaoru from leaving the town, but they're scarecrows. I mean, seriously? Nobody's thinking what I'm thinking? Scarecrows are not strong; they're made of straw and clothes. It's not like they have muscle or whatever. If you have a match, you are going to win. Hell, if you have a hand you'll win. It's a scarecrow. Made of straw. I'm pretty sure you can fight it off, Kaoru. But no, Kaoru is an idiot and seems to have trouble fighting off men made of straw. Sigh.

Then Kaoru finds herself in her car, trying to start it up to leave the zombie scarecrows forever, but... seriously... one of the zombie scarecrow evil townspeople things is the mechanic who worked on your car, Kaoru. Stop trying to start it up and run. The evil mechanic didn't fix your car. They all lied to you. He specifically lied to you. The policeman lied to you. Stop trying to start it and... finally you run. Jeez. It took you long enough, you crazy broad. So, then Sally becomes one of the main characters, and Kaoru seems to feel the need to save her as well. All right, all right. I get it. It's cool.

What isn't cool is reading someone's private diary. That's not cool at all, Kaoru. You have committed the grave sin of invading somebody else's privacy, and that's terrible. Anyway, I'm going to stop being silly. Kaoru finds and reads Izumi's diary and learns that Izumi had a HUGE thing for her brother, Tsuyoshi, but Kaoru already knew that and... well, she kept t from her brother, actively trying to shut down any romance before it could get started. That's not very nice Kaoru. That's really not cool at all. It seems that Kaoru wasn't a very good friend. Not helping Izumi... no, actively making sure that Izumi had no chance with her brother... eventually causes Izumi to go a little crazy, cursing Kaoru and in the end killing herself. Izumi pulls a perfect "all work and no play make jack a dull boy" type of thing in her diary with the repetition of Kaoru's name over and over again before you kills herself though. That's pretty cool, almost unsettling. That's one reference to a better horror film. Then there's another reference as Izumi speaks of the jealousy that Kaoru has for her relationship with Tsuyoshi. Izumi pulls the reference from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) when Izumi opens her mouth and screams at Kaoru, exactly like what Donald Sutherland does in that movie. I rolled my eyes and was flabbergasted. It was a pretty blatant reference... both kind of were. And the rule of thumb is that you never reference a better movie in your film. Kakashi referenced at least two better movies.

So, the movie is moving along. The townspeople are reviving dead relatives through scarecrows. Izumi's restless spirit who is seeking revenge on Kaoru is kind of messing up the entire town though, causing a kind of dark energy to spread across it even into the zombie scarecrows. I like the idea of this, but it never really comes out after it's mentioned. I mean, yes, both of Izumi's parents are killed, but it's never really tense. It never feels as dark as it should. I think I might feel intimidated by some creepy zombie scarecrows, but it mostly feels kind of boring. They shamble a bit and there kind of is a chase... kind of... but really they're wasted... really, really wasted.

I will admit though that the best part of the movie is the ending. It gets kind of a little creepy maybe and stuff actually happens finally, which are always pluses in a horror movie. I like the way the scarecrow policeman gets up. That was pretty creepy, kind of unsettling to see a person move so unnaturally. Then... OH NO DIRT.... um, don't know where that came from... Oh boy, is this movie almost over? I kind of want it to be over... Again, the ending is good, but the movie is so slow and dull that I just want it to end already.

Eventually Kaoru finds her brother and grabs Sally. They all go off to leave the town but get sidetracked somehow to where the scarecrows are set to come back to life... conveniently. Izumi comes back to life and calls Tsuyoshi to her who uses a flare to burn them both up while they embrace. The burning effect is not well done, but sentiment was beautiful. I really liked it and thought it was pretty effective.

Eventually Sally and Kaoru run through the tunnel from the beginning of the movie, but Kaoru hears her brother calling her and decides to go back to the town as Sally escapes. It's a standard ending and kind of works, but I have questions and thoughts about this movie. And I shall list them.

1. What is Kaoru's relationship with her brother? It seems more than sisterly. Maybe it's just a Japanese thing, but seriously Kaoru seems either extra clinging or it seems like she may have an incestuous relationship, or at least incestuous feelings, for her brother. Maybe I'm wrong or reading too strongly into it, but it seems pretty apparent to me. It changes the dynamics of both characters if this were true, showing Tsuyoshi's coming to the town to be a way to get away from a sinful relationship with his sister, and Kaoru's pursuit of him to be basically showing that she is indeed the villain in this movie, not Izumi, who seems to be the biggest victim of all, a victim of Kaoru and her clingy ridiculous behavior. Now, even if there is nothing sexual or incestuously wrong with Kaoru's relationship with her brother, she's still wrong and terrible, basically refusing to live out her own life, giving it up rather easily just because her brother is that important to her. It's rather offensive to the senses.

2. I  like the living scarecrows, the shells that take in the dead souls. I think the original manga is much better put together, with the scarecrows accidentally taking on the faces of the dead and the souls never really coming back to life. It seems creepier that way, certainly more unsettling, and less explainable. I don't like the town with a dark secret type of thing, certainly not if it's supernatural like this movie was. The original manga just had more mystery and a better feeling to it. This film seemed really boring despite its short length. It just didn't have the power to be scary or effective or even really well done. It was an intensely mediocre film, one that I couldn't recommend to be watched even if it isn't necessarily an offensive or terrible film.

3. The tunnel seems to show a transition between life and death. I liked this idea quite a bit, but have seen it in other movies, most memorably in Spirited Away, where it was done SO much better. The transition between the living world and the world of the dead is a meaningful one and one that Kaoru just can't accept in the end, which I think is absolutely interesting, but really it's too little, too late for this film.. All of those people in the village cannot accept death and so live side-by-side with death, but once you leave the village, you leave death behind you as well. You move on, finding life instead of basking in death. It's what makes Sally's decision to leave such an important and strong-headed decision whereas Kaoru's decision to stay in the village is instead a weakness on her part. She's essentially a very needy, very weak character who has no choice but to look back when her brother calls, who has no choice to leave the land of the living because she doesn't have the strength to go on alone. You don't look back to death once you leave it behind you. You never look back. Orpheus taught us as much. Sodom and Gomorrah taught us as much. Salt, anyone? But Kaoru did look back, and of course it damned her. The ending might be the creepiest part, and the most thought-provoking as well. It certainly was a reference to those works and I thought it was very effective, even if it kind of destroyed Kaoru as the heroine and as a strong character... but she was never really strong, was she?

Kakashi is not a great movie. It has some moodiness to it and its atmosphere is well done for the most part, but it ultimately fails as a horror movie because it's never really scary. And it fails as a normal movie because it's never really all that interesting. It could have been a good zombie film, but it lacked the zombie bits. It could have been a good ghost revenge film, but the revenge really never comes. Kaoru both "wins" and "loses," but Izumi seems to basically cease to exist, thus never finding happiness with the, I assume, reborn Tsuyoshi, and never finding happiness in finding revenge against the girl she hated so much. It's a wishy-washy film, one that never really seems to do anything at all, and it ultimately fails because it could have been so much better if it had tried to be something definable, something scary or interesting. Instead it never really is anything at all.

Movie Appraisal: Dagon (2001)

H. P. Lovecraft stories have had quite a few problems over the years. They are known for having racial overtones, strange gods, emotionless writing, and are carefully crafted cosmic horror stories. There are good things and bad things to every single one of H. P. Lovecraft's stories or novellas and the pros and cons come out the best in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". You may be asking why I'm talking about that story and not "Dagon". I am because this film is actually based upon "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" instead of "Dagon".

"The Shadow Over Innsmouth" is one of H. P. Lovecraft's best known and most terrifying novels, mixing the unknown with genuine fear and adrenaline pumping horror. It involves the fleeing sort of horror, running from destiny, from death, and from an awful town full of strange folk. The racially charged overtones can be seen everywhere in it, as well as the ideas of strange religions and folk unlike ourselves.

I personally like Lovecraft and the types of stories he wrote. They come off as genuine even if the writing is not perfect or crazy emotional like most horror is today. He wrote the strange as if they were normal. Insanity was simply a side-effect of seeing something incomprehensible and suicide an easy out for the insane. The gods were deadly, evil things, and there was a rhythm to the stories and the plots. The characters were cookie-cut out of the same mold, but the situations were wholly new and beautifully done.

That being said, Dagon is... in a word... a mess. I'm not certain it knows what it wants to be or even should be. It'snot a horror movie, not really, although it has enough gore to suffice on that mark. But the out of place comedy does not work for horror or... well... really anything. I have found again and again that Lovecraftian stories, except by John Carpenter, tend to be overdone or cheesy, hardly worth the time or effort. This movie is no different. It feels hammy in all the wrong ways, but seems to want to be taken seriously, which I simply cannot do. The gore tells me that this movie does take itself seriously. The make-up effects are good for this kind of movie, and without the dialogue, characters, or sounds, this movie could have been wonderful, but ham and cheese acting, characters without any obvious motivations, and a plot that seems to convoluted to be fun to watch, this movie is an all around mess.

I can't say that I hate this movie. I just can't say that. I'm fond enough of Lovecraft and the story that I don't hate it, but I won't ever watch it again. I can't recommend it because it really is just that bad. Some scenes are better than others, but none are really all that good. None of the actors, except possibly the Spanish actors, are really good enough to pull this one off, and it comes as a disappointment. It could have been better, but ended up very hard to watch, with set-pieces instead of actual plot, and no characters to relate to.

Avoid this one. the stories are better and much more worth your time. Hell, even the video game Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is better and should be played over watching this.

This brings me to my last point: Why are Lovecraft films so unfilmable? I don't get it. They should be easy to make, but no... they are all universally terrible. It saddens me. I guess I'll stick with John Carpenter for my Lovecraftian fix. Into the Mouth of Madness and The Thing are genuinely amazing movies. Watch those instead of this ambitious failure.

Movie Appraisal: Session 9 (2001)

Session 9 is a fantastic psychological horror movie. This is exactly what every psychological horror movie should be. Yes, it takes credit from the location of the abandoned Danvers State Hospital, but the imagery overall is fantastic.Yes, there are some downsides, but with the relatively tiny amounts of good or even decent psychological horror movies out there, this movie does stand out to me as being absolutely full of quality.

While neither the acting nor the characters themselves really sell this movie, the directing and mental hospital imagery really do. What is scary than being inside of an abandoned mental asylum? Not much. What else can I even think of that would be scarier? Locked inside of the Parisian catacombs? Or I guess any catacombs? Yeah, I guess that would be more terrifying, but until I see horror movies with that as the setting, I am going to have to settle for this being one of the creepier settings.

A lot of psychological horror is set in hospitals, probably to remind all the viewers of death and how hospitals really are a place of sickness and death just as much as they are places of healing. It is how our society views death. We fear hospitals for what they represent: death, sickness, disease, cancer, sadness, grief... All those things come to mind when thinking about a hospital, and a mental hospital is even worse, throwing in insanity and psychosis into the mix, maybe even violence if there is a history of that with the patients.

My point here is that a lot of psychological horror tends to use that fear of hospitals against the viewer. Hospitals or mental hospitals appear in Jacob's Ladder, Autopsy, Room 8, Silent Hill, Ink, Stay, Black damn Swan, The Ring, Dead End, Sublime, 1408, and many others including many horror video games as well. My point is that the setting is used so much because it is useful for unsettling the watcher and useful for making people squirm. That is one of the reasons why Session 9 is so effective.

Is it my favorite psychological horror movie? No. It has its moments, but ultimately, despite the great and fearful visuals, it seems to lack something. The plot is simplistic, about working men cleaning up an old hospital and finding something dark within that place. Yes, there are small scares from time to time, but nothing that feels altogether coherent. It has a weird plot, one that turns about and has a big twist in the end, but ultimately feels like it lacks a soul.

Does it really matter if a horror movie has a soul or not?

No, I think this movie feels scary. There are scenes in this film that are intensely difficult to watch. One comes to mind with the use of the lobotomizing instrument. It's really creepy.

The plot is all over the place and, like I said previously, involves a few twists and turns with an ultimate story "twist." I'm not going to spoil it, but it involves Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), which seems to be a common thing in psychological horror (like Identity for example) and a loose cannon of a character. The pacing is good and the characters, although not exactly likable or played by amazing actors, do a great job for their roles within the story.

There are some Chekhov's guns throughout the story as well and if you pay attention you can figure out the plot long before the movie presents the solution to you. Watch the phone calls between Gordon and his wife, watch the different deaths of the cast and see if you can figure it out. The character of Simon is also creepy too, creepy enough to give one of my friends who watched it years ago nightmares about it for weeks afterward.

Again, this is a solid entry into psychological horror even if it isn't the best. It's scary and well-paced, and thoroughly enjoyable, with few flaws that I can really even mention save the weak cast. The imagery is incredibly well done and it really does stick out as one of the better psychological horror movies around even if it really jumps onto an overdone psychological horror trope in using hospitals as a main setting. It's a solid movie anyway and lovers or even likers of psychological movies or horror movies will be impressed by it.

Video Game Assessment: Silent Hill 2 (2001)

Silent Hill 2 is known to most people who have ever been into the survival horror video game experience. Made for the PlayStation 2 for the console in 2001, it has become known as one of the best video games of all time.

Video Games tend to have a history as having storylines that aren't amazing or plots that are very simplistic, but this game has much more than just a simple plot. You may be wondering why I skipped Silent Hill, the first game in the franchise, and while it is true that I've never played the game and thus couldn't review it, it's also true that Silent Hill 2 is very much a standalone game. No characters from the first game appear in this game (except arguably the town itself), and this makes the game even better. I know I started this paragraph off talking about storylines and I'm getting to my point slowly, but surely. This game stands alone on its own without the first game's help to hold it up. It's story, although slow, is stunning and creepy and drags the player right into the madness of the town itself.

I've played a lot of survival horror games over the years and I'm going to review some of them this month, but this game is the review I've been looking forward to the most. Silent Hill 2 is one of my favorite video games of all time despite the graphical limitations for an early PS2 title and the not stellar gameplay. Strangely enough though, these things don't take away from the greatness of the game. On the contrary they add to it. The graphical limitations and strangely squarish polygons along with the mist which is a staple to most of the series, make the game somewhat more terrifying, almost as if you've wandered into some strange and horrific land of misshaped everything. The story feels so real despite the terror which adds to it. And the controls being utter crap just means that running is always an option, possibly a preferable option and it lead to an atmosphere of non-confrontation.

I just spoke of atmosphere, so I'm going to go into detail. This game is all about atmosphere. That's a strange word to use to describe a relatively simple thing like the look and feel of the game, but the atmosphere of the game is done phenomenally, and I don't use that word lightly. You can pick any movie, any book, and I don't think they'd quite be able to draw me in the way this video game did back when I first played it, and it's all because I, and I'm going to guess we, can relate to the main character, or a character somewhere in the plot. We can relate to a crappy world of nonexistence, a mad place of confusion and fear. This game takes the deepest fears in our minds and turns them out for all of us to see. It's wonderful and terrifying to see what terrors reside within us all.

I guess I should mention the plot a bit, although I really don't have to. This game is good enough that being unknown to you should force you to look into it.

The plot follows one James Sunderland who has just received a letter from his dead wife, who has been dead for three years. I know the postage system is slow... but DAAAAMN... Anyway, she writes:

In my restless dreams, I see that town. Silent Hill. You promised you'd take me there again someday. But you never did. Well I'm alone there now... In our 'special place'... Waiting for you...

Yes, James Sunderland, your dead wife is "waiting" for you. This is a bit of a problem... no, this is a huge problem. James wonders about this. He has no idea what to expect or what's in store for him, all he knows is that he wants to see what the letter is talking about... and maybe see if he can find his wife amidst a tourist town that the had a nice vacation in before she became ill and died.

The video game starts out in a dingy bathroom and outside is a dingy world. Silent Hill doesn't seem like the nice town everybody makes it out to be. In fact, the main road is closed and there's nobody around but strange noises in the mist...

Eventually James makes it into the middle of town through a graveyard meeting a young woman named Angela in the process. He comes to find that the town is... well, it's empty. There's nobody there and many roads are cut off through strange means. He sees creatures in the midst, some of which attack him, others of which want nothing to do with him. The player is drawn into the story just as James is. What could happen next? What's in store for our hero?

James wanders around the town until he finds an apartment building. He needs to go through it to find what he believes may be the "special place" Mary, his dead wife, speaks of. He thinks it could be a park. He goes into the apartments finding various empty rooms and some strange monsters and eventually a young heavyset man named Eddie who he finds vomiting into a toilet. The mood changes as James meets Angela again and she seems to be contemplating suicide. He takes the knife she is holding from her and is watched and later attacked by a monster known only as Pyramid Head.

Now, Pyramid Head is one of the most famous monsters in video game history. I won't say much about him yet. He torments James along the journey, as James goes from the park, to a sanitarium, to a historical society, to Nowhere, and later to a hotel. Along the way James meets two more characters of interest, a stripper named Maria who looks remarkably like his dead wife except for the stripper part, and a young girl named Laura.

James goes through Silent Hill focused on his one goal of finding his wife, but the game's strength relies on the other character's stories as well. We only get bits and pieces of who they are and what they're doing in Silent Hill, but their stories are every bit as beautiful and terrifying as the story of James and Mary.

James makes his way through the various places always with his mind set on finding Mary, but Pyramid Head has different intentions. He kills Maria in the basement of the sanitarium and James is forced to watch and unable to save her. The problem is that James meets up with Maria again throughout the story and every time she is killed again, but more and more quickly. She also seems to know an alarming amount about his wife and himself...

As it turns out, Maria is a dream within James' head. She was born from his desire for his wife to be alive still. Pyramid Head is the tormentor and punisher of James throughout the game and this is because Pyramid Head is James' guilt for doing the unthinkable.

I'm going to spoil the game here. Why? Because leaving this part out leaves out a large chunk of the story. James' dreams up this town of punishments because he has murdered his sick wife, smothered her with a pillow actually, just a little while before the start of the game. The letter is his own delusion he dreamed up so that he wouldn't have to face being her killer. He makes himself forget what he has done and the game is pretty much the town itself forcing him to remember and to face what he had done.

The psychological horror aspect of this video game is undeniable and visceral. It's a wonderful story that plays out in such a way that by the end you're unsure of whether to tremble or to cry. The atmosphere and the characters lead to something so believable, a prison of the mind, a trial of the mind... and it's a wonderful weaving of both story and character to make something wonderful out of both.

This game is frankly terrifying, especially if you're like me and played it blind the first time you ever played it. You don't know what's going to happen next or where the story will lead to next. You don't know where everything will lead and it makes the game horrifying. Will a monster jump out at you? Will the invincible Pyramid Head attack you around a corner? Where might the story lead to next? What the game makes is something fantastic, a great story, believable and sad characters, great and meaningful monsters and enemies, and most of all, one of the best plots I have ever seen in any medium.

I could compare books and movies to this game, but most fall short. The only book I can think of with anywhere near the emotional story is House of Leaves which I may review this October... but I'm not saying now, and Jacob's Ladder which I already said I'm planning on reviewing. So, I may make some comparisons when I get to those reviews.

But anyway this game is great. If you have a PS2 (or XBox or PC since the game is on all three), pick this game up. You won't be disappointed, but you may be terrified. If you have a weak stomach or weak heart, just read this review and look at the images and have a good time thinking about how terrifying a video game can be. This is on of my favorite video games of all time, and I can't help recommending it to the populace. I'm actually currently replaying it and it's still terrifying.

Anyway, as I've said, this game is fantastic and wonderful, and you'll see me gushing about this a million times over as I compare and contrast it to other psychological horror plots and stories, because this one is at the pinnacle of the psychological horror genre and... well, it's at the pinnacle of plots in general.

All right, that's enough of me praising something. Let's just move on from here...