This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Tough Love
Plot Overview
Artist James Sunderland (Jeremy
Irvine) is undergoing therapy, whose female shrink M (Nicola
Alexis) finds him more troubled than even the hard case vets she's
treated in the past. She has him cloistered somewhere, but he
gets loose and winds up his Mustang convertible on the open road.
A moment's distraction and he spins out next to pretty girl Mary
Crane (Hannah Emily Anderson) waiting for her bus. She
literally has knocked him for a loop reminiscent of a father-son
fusion described in Khaled Hosseini:
his jubilant, running welcomes when Rasheed came home and Rasheed picking him up by the elbows and swinging him round and round until Zalmai's legs flew straight out, the two of them giggling afterward when Zalmai stumbled around like a drunk. She thought of their disorderly games and their boisterous laughs, their secretive glances. (316–17)
James enters a fugue developed for us in movie time lasting till near the end of the picture. Introducing themselves and being mutually attracted James drives Mary into town whose bus passed her by. She cautions him that there's a dark side to her he doesn't know about. They shack up together in Lakeview Hotel. Her friends caution her that “love is not an easy thing” (“love is hard”), it's not as if one can just hop into bed with a lovely and live blissfully ever after. It takes work. Anthropologist Desmond Morris—best known for his book, The Naked Ape—writes of human sexual relations:
The [sexual] preliminaries provide time for careful judgments to be made, judgments that may be hard to form once the massive, shared emotional impact of double orgasm has been experienced. This powerful moment can act as such a tight ‘bonder;’ that it may well tie together two people quite unsuited to each other, if they have not spent sufficient time exploring each other's personalities during the sexual preliminaries. (247)
Their relationship is hit &
miss, she dies, and James leaves town. He receives an unexpected
letter from her telling him to meet her at their special place, so
he returns forthwith much to the chagrin of his shrink. James
narrates in the video game version, “Mary died of that damn
disease three years ago. So then why am I looking for her?”
It takes some time to find her in the now desolate town, but he
meets three women, her alter egos: Angela is a no-nonsense worker
shoring up the beach with sandbags. Laurie is a playful little
girl with a baby doll. And Mary herself is a ready wit. They all
make up one entity. Her father's “poisonous” influence
triggers the artist's imagination to produce horrific monsters throughout,
which she'd do well to distance herself from by going out with a guy.
It is quite logical to believe that some kind of dating is necessary to the development of the judgment and pair interaction that is at the root of real objectivity in mate selection. Those who have dated more than one person have a chance to compare and to learn some of the usual behavior patterns of members of the opposite sex. They learn to distinguish between those whose personalities seem to promise a durable compatibility and those whose personalities obviously do not. Dating is an exploratory experience through which young people learn. In most circles today, therefore, it is considered desirable that young people “circulate” rather than “go steady” from the beginning, that some variety of dating experience is favorable to ultimate mate choice. The girl who is considered desirable as a date by a number of fellows is presumed to be the one most likely to be sought after in marriage. (223)
James meets one other woman Maria who says he's the only “normal” person she's seen in days. She represents the other women a fellow should date to get general bearings on how to relate to women. She's pretty hot and they tool around a while.
Then James comes out of his fugue to find himself meeting Mary for the first time on that highway. Now he introduces himself as “Gentleman James” and does a U–turn to go off with her to the “next town” where she was headed when he made her miss her bus, her suitcase spilling clothes and her head psychic energy.
Ideology
It's up for grabs how this romantic adventure will turn out for the star-struck couple, but that's nothing new. (Prov. 30:18-19) “There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.” The writer of this proverb juxtaposed three hard-to-track movements with romantic intrigues: a soaring eagle, a slithering snake, and a tossed-about ship. RtSH employs images from the same three venues to prepare the viewer for the unanticipated love machinations. “The way of an eagle in the air” corresponds to the Silent Hill summer shower that strikes unexpectedly.
“The way of a serpent upon a rock” corresponds to the Ford Mustang being wound out on a twisty mountain road.
“The way of a ship in the midst of the sea” corresponds to a lake having overflowed its banks, needing to be contained.
“The way of a man with a maid” is up for grabs, the above clues notwithstanding.
Production Values
“” (2026) is the third entry in the Silent Hill movie series, which is based on “Silent Hill 2” (2001) and elaborated on in video games as well. It was co-written by Christophe Gans with Hiroyuki Owaku and William Josef Schneider, and directed by Christophe Gans. It stars Jeremy Irvine and Hannah Emily Anderson who did a credible job. Others had not much screen time in this one.
MPA rated it R for bloody violent content, language and brief drug use. The time line was artistically disjointed, but the real time shots & visit one flashbacks were brightly lit, visit two was dark, and therapy sessions were muddy—not that we couldn't use a program regardless. It wasn't strictly consistent with its other incarnations. I treated it as a stand-alone work. The setting was creepy, the pace unrelenting, and the CGI monsters frightening. Runtime is 1¾ hours.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
I found it better than expected. Maybe I should be an art critic. My education is engineering, but I could relate. This one is for the artsy crowd on the dark end of the spectrum.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Decent action scenes. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Well done special effects. Video Occasion: Special interest. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Three and a half stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture is quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.
Hosseini, Khaled. A Thousand Splendid Suns. Copyright © 2007 by ATTS Publications LLC. New York: Riverhead Books, 2007. Print.
Landis, Paul H. Making the Most of Marriage. New York: Meredith Publishing, 1965. Print.
Morris, Desmond. Manwatching. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org