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鬼魅山房

5月11日 霧中見

三十年前邪靈蹤火 小鎮一夜變鬼域
三十年後鬼童引路 墮入當年血腥時空
此時此刻比死更恐怖……

故事大綱:

一個染上怪病的女孩，一個無助的母親，一個充滿秘密的詭異城鎮-寂靜嶺。

小女孩雪倫患了怪病，訪尋名醫屢醫無效，其母親蘿絲(莉達美雪飾演)又拒絕讓女兒入住精神病院，為了找尋醫治女兒的方法，蘿絲決定帶雪倫前往寂靜嶺(Silent Hill)，這是女兒經常於夢中呢喃的地方。蘿絲不理會丈夫基斯 (辛般飾演)的反對，深信這個寂靜嶺定能找到她尋覓已久的答案。

當蘿絲越來越接近寂靜嶺之際，一個靈異物體突然閃出，蘿絲為了閃避而釀成車禍並撞昏了，清醒後她發現女兒已失去?影! 蘿絲只好連同來自鄰鎮的警員(茱莉賀丹飾演)深入鬼魅山房尋找失蹤女兒的下落。

蘿絲的目的地竟然是被無情炭火洗禮的凶城，一個只有黑暗的地方，四周充滿毒霧及不知名的生物。蘿絲於搜索途中漸漸發現鬼魅山房鮮為人知的秘密--它殘酷及充滿禁忌的過去，與及被詛咒的源頭。甚至連摯愛女兒雪倫也不過是這個沈重且不幸的命運中的一環………

蘿絲決意找回失蹤女兒，在追尋真相的同時，卻發現自己被捲入更深的旋渦，她能否從各種異靈手中救回自己的女兒?

鬼魅山房的世界
《鬼魅山房》跟其他同類型電影不同，它著重呈現故事的真實與虛幻，要了解《鬼魅山房》，就得了解這個地方的現實面與非現實面。《鬼魅山房》是一個擁有四個空間的世界，包括1970年真正存在的寂靜嶺、現在的寂靜嶺、於霧中的寂靜嶺以及於黑暗邪靈手中的寂靜嶺。電影最大的挑戰莫過於要展現不同階段的寂靜嶺，監製當卡摩迪說：「我們特別搭建了大型的場景，足足佔用了5個攝影棚。其中2個世界與時間有密切的關係；一個反映10年前真實的寂靜嶺，用以拍攝電影中的倒?片段；另一個為辛般飾演的丈夫基斯前往找尋其妻女下落的寂靜嶺。其他兩個世界則與空間有密切關係；一個為蘿絲於大霧中找尋女兒的寂靜嶺，另一個為代表了地獄與黑暗的寂靜嶺。整個制作發掘了各種於空間上時間上甚至是形而上的可能性」。讓《鬼魅山房》增添一份特殊的神秘感。

此片的執行製作安德魯馬遜如此形容：「這是一個介乎生死或逃避現實的故事。主角們要對抗的是對寂寞的恐懼、對黑暗的恐懼、面對自己的陰暗面的恐懼以及害怕自己的命運。」

電影與遊戲最大的分別為電影以女性作主導而不是電子遊戲中以男性作主導。作出這樣大的改變是有原因的。導演簡斯解釋：「當處理人性的陰暗面等題材時，女性的特有的溫柔及與生俱來的母性，可以令故事更有深度及層次，同一時間，亦可以加深故事中面對生死的取捨的矛盾情緒。

《鬼魅山房》的主題為母愛、信念與及被迫害的無奈。導演於《鬼魅山房》中以母愛對抗困難，電影中的母愛是純潔無瑕的，是最尊貴及最偉大的事，同時是電影的賣點。戲中的所有女角都需要面對她們的母性，只是以不同的方式表達而已。

片中的《鬼魅山房》提到小鎮因為沉迷於巫術，而走上悲劇性的結局。導演簡斯指出：「歐洲在十七、八世紀，所謂女巫其實只是掙脫傳統的女性，這也是《鬼魅山房》的主題，掙取自由。」

從電腦遊戲Silent Hill 到電影《鬼魅山房》

電腦遊戲改編有一定的難度，不同於小說改編，小說有很多情節的鋪陳，而遊戲只有精鍊的片段。遊戲的創作者山崗晃 (Akira Yamaoka) 集各家之大成，包括揉合了法國超現實藝術家如Hans Bellmer 及當代藝術家Fracncis Bacon的特質，再配以卡夫卡的文學精神，製造出Silent Hill 的靈異鬼世界。

執行監製夏迪達認為以法國超現實主義的角度處理此片非常合邏輯，導演簡斯是不二人選。「《鬼魅山房》是一個多層次的故事，每當你以為自己已經了解明白其故事內容時，同時間又會發現新的事情逼使你重新思考。改編這個遊戲得找到它的中心主題，同時必須保留觀眾熟悉的素材如怪物以保存其推理與懸疑」。

對於導演來說，《鬼魅山房》的吸引力在於遊戲本身所呈現的奇特世界，故事結合了恐怖、科幻、戲劇各種元素，卻又無法歸類。簡斯認為：「這個故事有很多不同的層面，主題是片中的各人都在受苦。我最喜歡《鬼魅山房》的是這是一個現代的地方，然而一旦處身其中就無法脫離。當然，這跟《鬼魅山房》是一個近乎神話的靈異故事有莫大關係。」

《鬼魅山房》的怪物
《鬼魅山房》改編自熱門的驚險電子遊戲。電影為了忠於原著，展現其中陰暗及恐怖的原素，特別塑造出幾個可怕的怪物，包括: Red Pyramid、Grey children、the Armless、Janitor、蟑螂團(Cockroaches)、黑暗護士(dark nurse)等。

片中所有的怪物造型都是各設計師的心血結晶，其中只有蟑螂團是電腦特技合成的。Red Pyramid的造型是由Patrick Tatopoulos 設計，Patrick解釋其創作：「我們的創作盡量貼近遊戲中的怪物造型，可是，我們更重視比例及怪物的優雅度。美感不一定等同精緻漂亮，片中的怪物有其獨特的美學，我認為怪物只要有其優雅的特質，以及表現出怪物人性部分，加起來同樣使人著迷。」

為達至完美，Red Pyramid 的製作於多倫多完成，他們將Red Pyramid的零件分件運往多倫多，Paul Jones及其製作小組則負責組裝。Paul及其小組與設計師Wendy Partidge合作，設計出與膚色近似的裙子及15吋高的麵包鞋，鞋跟經過特別設計，一腳矮於一腳，以營造出跛腳的步姿。

Grey Children 則於後期制作時，用電腦效果做出千軍萬馬的感覺。設計師以彈性的布料設計連身衣，噴上膠料以營造出半透明的肌膚質感。導演簡斯希望片中的怪物造型都能具有一定的官能刺激，特別是Grey Children，導演希望讓觀眾覺得它們隨時都在尖叫。Grey Children 的面容扭曲而且嘴巴張大，好像它們無時無刻都在哭叫。

至於怪物Armless，設計師則強調Armless的病態。Armless雖然沒有嘴巴，但觀眾同樣能夠感受到它們內心的痛苦。最後的還有身穿灰色制服的黑暗護士(Dark Nurses)，它們的制服似乎是其身體的一部份，而且每個黑暗護士皆欠缺表情，護士們的動作都有如扯線公仔。

怪物Janitor則是遊戲中沒有的，乃電影原創。這個貌似木乃伊的角色由Paul Jones 設計。Paul自己是Silent Hill 的忠實game 迷，其設計非常符合Silent Hill 的精神，他們所有的設計的最高原則是「令人不安卻又不致於作嘔」。

《Silent Hill》 電腦遊戲
截至2006年，Silent Hill 已經出版了3個版本，每次新版本面世都會引起轟動。Silent Hill與其他驚險遊戲最大的不同之處，Silent Hill特別注重故事、人物及所營造的氣氛多於動作場面或血腥程度。

遊戲本身充斥了各種各樣的怪物甚至各式其色的武器，但最吸引的地方是遊戲本身要應付的場景難題，玩家的決定直接影響遊戲的結局，充滿電影感。

Silent Hill 於1999年出版第一輯，遊戲本身環繞主人翁Harry於Silent Hill所發生的事及如何拯救其失蹤女兒。電影《鬼魅山房》就是改編自第一輯的Silent Hill 遊戲。

莉達美雪飾演蘿絲
導演基斯度簡斯認為莉達是嘉麗絲基利Grace Kelly 與美雅花露(Mia Ferrow)的混合體。莉達於戲中飾演一名生活富裕的太太，但女兒的病使她交上不幸，莉達為角色加入了世故以及脆弱。隨?電影的發展，蘿絲一角變得越來越堅強。

莉達表示：「我最初看的時候，看了十頁就看不下去，因為我太害怕了。我最後都能看完劇本，但只能在下午的時候看。故事本身非常緊湊，情節刺激，所以我接下這個角色」。
蘿絲一角由澳洲女星莉達美雪擔演，她最為影迷熟悉是與歌連法路（Colin Farrell）合演驚慄片《來電險事》，除此之外，她還與荷里活新一代動作巨星雲迪素合演《黑煞天魔》。莉達的近作為《小飛俠前傳之魔幻童心》（Finding Neverland），飾演尊尼特普（Johnny Depp）的妻子。她憑該片獲提名美國演員公會的「整體演出獎」。莉達的作品還有由丹素華盛頓主演的《鑣火》，於活地亞倫的《美蓮達與美蓮達》中，莉達再一次發揮了她精湛的演技，一人分飾兩角。

祖狄莉菲蘭飾演雪倫
10歲的祖狄是Daytime Emmy 最年輕的得獎者。她於本片中分別飾演雪倫、Alessa 及邪惡的Alessa三角。三個角色同時存在於不同的空間之中，一人分飾三角，難度甚高。

導演在籌備影片時，與編劇對於選角感到非常懊惱，本來導演打算找三胞胎來演出這三個角色，但當見到祖狄以後，導演認為她是最適合的人選，特別是看到祖狄於「醫院兇靈」的演出。導演憶述試鏡時情?：「她一開始就把我們攝倒了，演得非常好，特別在於她只有十歲，舉手投足都發揮了小女孩的特質，但其演出不止於此，這當然與祖狄的聰敏有很大關係。」特別是祖狄參加試鏡時說：「我早就想演邪靈角色了。」導演認為這角色非她不可。

萊莉賀丹飾演 西貝
萊莉的銀幕處女作為夥拍占基利的《忘我奇緣》，片中的萊莉非常女性化。《忘我奇緣》後，接拍荷里活猛片《神奇四俠》。萊莉以往的演出多以女性化角色為主，今次於《鬼魅山房》中經導演刻意安排下一改形象，化身成硬朗女警。

西貝一角為所有Silent Hill game 迷熟悉，西貝獨立而且堅強，雖然年少時，受到信仰的沖擊，失卻信仰，但西貝與生俱來的母性及保護慾幫助了蘿絲克服於《鬼魅山房》遇到的困難。

辛般飾演 基斯
辛般最為人熟悉的角色必定是《魔戒》的演出，辛般於《魔戒現身》、《雙城奇謀》演出被魔戒的權力迷惑的波羅莫一角。辛般已參演超過35套電影，累積了相當多的舞台經驗，辛般是英國電視史上其中一位最成功的演員。

導演基斯度簡斯
法籍導演基斯度簡斯絕對是《鬼魅山房》的不二人選，連此片執行監制夏迪達都這樣認為：「我們能贏得遊戲的電影改編權，很大原因是簡斯的遠見，他製作了近30分鐘的短片予日本的遊戲生產商及作者，我們就獲得了改編權，我相信日本方面從短片中可以看到簡斯對Silent Hill 遊戲的了解」。

簡斯本身為電玩及漫畫迷，對《鬼魅山房》遊戲可謂暸如指掌，難得的是簡斯能以遊戲創造者的角度出發。「我對《鬼魅山房》的鍾愛源於Silent Hill既是一個現代的地方，但當你置身其中的時候，你會發現自己泥足深陷，猶如跌入迷宮之中」。

簡斯的前作《狙魔特攻》獲提名Saturn Award 及 2002年Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horro films 的最佳導演，及獲得法國奧斯卡的最佳服裝設計。

Silent Hill鬼魅山房演職員表

森姆夏迪達呈獻
Silent hill dop inc/davis films/ Konami製作
基斯度簡斯作品
"鬼魅山房"
主演：《小飛俠前傳之魔幻童心》莉達美雪
《魔戒》系列 辛般
《神奇4俠》萊莉賀丹
《借聲還魂》狄寶娜卡拉安芝
《謊島叛變》甘高迪斯
《90分鐘死亡倒數》泰雅艾倫
《星空奇遇記》系列 愛麗絲姬芝
《醫院兇靈》祖狄莉菲蘭
選角：迪艾杜保雲
服裝：《妖夜尋狼》系列 雲迪柏莉芝
怪物設計及總監：《妖夜尋狼》系列 柏德烈達杜普路斯
音樂：《生化危機之殲滅生還者》謝夫丹拿
根據Konami原創遊戲改編
剪接：《狙魔特攻》史巴斯提柏基爾
美術：《奇幻兵團LXG》卡路史畢亞
攝影：《狙魔特攻》丹魯斯甸
監製：《生化危機之殲滅生還者》當卡摩迪
執行監製：《生化危機之殲滅生還者》域陀夏迪達及Akira Yamaoka
執行製作：《22世紀殺人網絡》系列 安德魯馬遜
編劇：《危險人物》金像編劇 羅渣艾維利
製作：《生化危機》系列 森姆夏迪達
導演：《狙魔特攻》基斯度簡斯
發行：安樂影片有限公司

SILENT HILL

Production Notes

SILENT HILL PRODUCTION NOTES

A child's mysterious ailment. A helpless mother. An eerie, deserted city shrouded in mist, plagued by secrets.

The mysteries are only beginning to deepen.

When young mother Rose (Radha Mitchell) -- desperate to find a cure for her daughter Sharon's bizarre illness -- refuses to accept a medical recommendation of psychiatric institutionalization, she flees with Sharon and heads for SILENT HILL, the town that her daughter continuously names in her sleep. Although her husband Christopher (Sean Bean) adamantly opposes, Rose is convinced the mysterious town holds the answers she so desperately needs. But as her car approaches the deserted city's limits, a mysterious figure appears in the road, forcing Rose to swerve and crash. When she comes to, Sharon is gone, and suddenly Rose - accompanied by a determined police officer (Laurie Holden) from a nearby town -- is on a desperate quest in Silent Hill to find her child.

Immediately it's clear that her destination - left alone since devastating coal fires ravaged Silent Hill -- is unlike any place she's ever been: smothered by fog, inhabited by a variety of strange, haunted beings, and periodically overcome by a living Darkness that literally transforms everything it touches. As Rose searches for her daughter, she begins to learn the history of Silent Hill - its violent, puritanical past and the origins of its accursed state -- and realizes that her daughter is just part of a larger, more terrifying destiny.

Silent Hill stars Radha Mitchell (Melinda and Melinda, Finding Neverland, Man on Fire), Sean Bean (North Country, National Treasure, Lord of the Rings), Laurie Holden (Fantastic Four, The Majestic), Deborah Kara Unger (White Noise, The Game, Crash), Kim Coates (Assault on Precinct 13, Pearl Harbor, Black Hawk Down), Tanya Allen (Starhunter), with Alice Krige (Star Trek: First Contact, Reign of Fire) and Jodelle Ferland (Tideland).

-Samuel Hadida presents a Silent Hill DCP Inc.- Davis Films Production, in association with Konami, Silent Hill. Directed by Christophe Gans (Brotherhood of the Wolf, Crying Freeman) from a screenplay written by Roger Avary (Pulp Fiction, The Rules of Attraction) Silent Hill is a Canada-France Co-Production. The producers are Samuel Hadida (Domino, Resident Evil, Brotherhood of the Wolf ) and Don Carmody (Chicago, Resident Evil: Apocalypse). Andrew Mason (Dark City, The Matrix Trilogy) and Victor Hadida (Domino, Resident Evil: Apocalypse) serve as Executive Producers, along with Akira Yamaoka, who created the hugely successful Konami video game on which the film was based. The director of photography is Dan Lausten, the production designer is Carol Spier, the editor is Sebastien Prangere, the creature designer and supervisor is Patrick Tatopoulos, the costume designer is Wendy Partridge and the music is from Jeff Danna.

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

For director Christophe Gans, the appeal of making the film of Silent Hill lay in its otherworldliness, its mixture of horror, sci-fi and drama elements, all the while refusing to succumb to the rules of any one genre. "This is a classic Twilight Zone story, dealing with emotions and the supernatural," says Gans. "The story, embedded in different dimensions and linked by the fact that everyone is suffering, rests between the tradition of Romanesque melodrama and surrealistic science fiction. What I like is that Silent Hill is a current place, but once you are caught in it, you are condemned to wander there forever. But of course, it's absolutely mythological; not a normal story at all."

It was while on the set of Gans's hit film Brotherhood of the Wolf, talking with Samuel Hadida, the producer of the film - and the man behind Metropolitan FilmExport and its production arm, Davis Films - that the idea of transforming the popular video game Silent Hill into a feature film developed. Brotherhood was the pair's second film together after Crying Freeman and they instantly latched onto the possibilities inherent in creating a gripping tale and arresting cinematic experience around the idea of a town caught between heaven and hell, trapped by a vicious secret.

"Silent Hill is a step beyond what we have seen in cinema," continues Hadida. "The video game is extraordinarily popular because each gamer experiences something unique when they play it. This film is going to further that experience by adding dimension and mythology to an already amazing concept. I first met Christophe when I was presenting one of my films, Evil Dead at the 1982 Festival du Film Fantastique de Paris; he was there with his short film, "Silver Slime". Throughout our years of working together, we have been waiting to make a film that would be an homage to the horror genre. Silent Hill is that homage."

Convincing the makers of the game, Konami, to give Gans and Hadida the rights to make the movie was no small task, but Hadida knew the game's richly visual aesthetics and spooky narrative would dovetail perfectly with Gans's encyclopedic film knowledge. "It's a twisted story with enormous reference to the cinema of today because the Japanese creators have taken their influences from the masters of the horror genre," says Hadida. "Christophe, having seen almost every film ever made, is the right person to reference these genres." The competition for the rights to the game was fierce. Hadida and Gans found that they were competing against more than a few major Hollywood production companies. What made the difference, and it was the only thing that made the difference, was Christophe Gans' vision, which he conveyed in a thirty minute on-camera statement to the game's creator, who in turn took that to the Board of Directors at Konami. Gans took home the prize because Konami felt he was the only one who perfectly understood the essence of the game.

Yet at the same time, the difference in media was crucial to understand. "A game is a game, and a film is a film," says Gans. "Silent Hill is about diving into a frightening world. What was important in the idea to do a movie was to bring a background story into the foreground. And we wanted to make all the characters grey and ambiguous, very multi-dimensional."

Producer Don Carmody had previously teamed with Samuel Hadida on the blockbuster Resident Evil franchise, and was immediately intrigued by what Silent Hill promised: a movie experience "intellectually interesting, stimulating, and definitely cinematic."

THE WORLDS OF SILENT HILL

Integral to understanding the complex universe of Silent Hill is grasping the many realities and unrealities of the place. "Silent Hill is very different from any other film in the genre," comments Hadida. "This is a world that exists on four different dimensions or levels of existence: the town of Silent Hill in the 1970s when it was real and existing, Silent Hill now, Silent Hill in the fog state and Silent Hill in the Darkness state." Carmody adds, "it's an incredibly challenging effort to show all these levels visually and to do so, massive sets were built, requiring five studios to accommodate them all, and for every set, there are two or three levels of existence."

Two of the dimensions have to do with time - reflecting the real Silent Hill of thirty years ago as seen in flashbacks that look like scratchy old film stock, and the real Silent Hill of today, in which Sean Bean's Christopher has gone looking for his wife. The other two dimensions to the town - the foggy daylight in which Rose tries to find her daughter, and the rust-colored, occasionally enveloping Darkness that represents an evocation of Hell - have to do with space. "I like this idea that we are literally exploring dimensions of space, time and something metaphysical, mystical," says Gans.

Executive Producer Andrew Mason, who came to this project with a curriculum vitae that includes The Crow, Dark City and the Matrix trilogy, gravitates towards filmmakers who create a complete world. Having spent a childhood reading science fiction, he has a penchant for alternative realities. "This is either a story about what happens in the moments between death and your fate or perhaps it's a story about the existence of a real alternative dimension some of us get trapped into because we deny our fate," says Mason. "This film deals with the terror of loneliness, the fear of the dark, the fear of taking responsibility for your own evil side, and the fear of your own fate. In Silent Hill the game, the creators put you constantly in an environment in which everything is potentially threatening and nothing feels like it will ever offer you comfort. This film seeks to reproduce that experience for a wider audience."

And if there's some confusion about its altered realities, it's intentional, Gans says. "We do not try to explain everything because I prefer people to find the meaning in the dream quality of this story. It is more pleasurable to enjoy the opacity. It is a playful invitation to be intelligent."

In adapting the game, Gans did make a crucial change to the story - the protagonist of the film is female, rather than male. "If you deal with disturbing issues such as we do in the film, you must have a saving grace," he says. "Bringing women into the story, (the cast is almost entirely female), was my way of doing that. By putting the issues on a feminine level, it makes them more complex and, at the same time, more ambivalent."

The leitmotiv in "Silent Hill" is motherhood, faith and persecution, all presented on a symbolic level. Gans' film Brotherhood of the Wolf (which he regards as his 'boy's film'), features Mani, a shamanistic North American Aboriginal who believed in the forces of nature. Silent Hill is the feminine counterpart in which Gans explores the force of motherhood against intolerance. "Rose, as Sharon's adoptive mother, loves the child so much, Sharon becomes her own. In this way, motherhood in the film is about Immaculate Conception - motherhood achieved in the noblest way. And that is the saving grace of the film. All these female characters have different ways of coping with motherhood."

Complementing Rose is Cybil, the childlessless police officer who adopts Rose's quest; Dahlia, the suffering mother who lost her child to a fanatical sect; Cristabella, the religious leader who has turned away from motherhood for what she believes is the greater good of the community; Anna, the innocent who grasps onto anything that fashioned itself as a mother; and Dark Alessa, who tends to her namesake with all the savagery that the maternal instinct can mobilize.

By the time Silent Hill reaches its devastating conclusion in the suddenly unfriendly sanctuary of a witch-obsessed cult, Gans's film has coalesced into a cautionary tale of the dangers of religious fanaticism that evokes the disturbing history of witch hunting. "In the 17th and 18th century in Europe, the witches who were persecuted were women who wanted to be free, who wanted to be considered as conscious entities," Gans details. "Monotheistic religions constantly attack the idea of femininity and this is something that was clearly in my mind. But I am not moralizing. I try first to tell a story and if audiences dig into it, they might find what I like and what I don't like. If someone was to watch Brotherhood of the Wolf and then Silent Hill, they'd have a pretty good idea of who I am."

Mason concurs. "Anyone who's seen Brotherhood of the Wolf knows there's a very sure hand at the helm of this movie. They'd know this was someone who enjoyed the grandeur that cinema has to offer and who could bring a vast and amazing adventure alive on the screen. But what they didn't perhaps see was how twisted and surrealist a brain he has, and this is an opportunity for him to put those things together."

Cinematographer Dan Laustsen returned to work with Gans once again, having shot the director's hit Brotherhood of the Wolf. "Christophe has a very clear vision of what he likes and it's just fantastic," explains Laustsen. "I've never worked with anyone who knows so much about movies. He's completely visual. I'm sure he has seen all the movies in the world. In the case of Silent Hill, it is not horror, horror, horror. It's scary, but it's very poetic with beautiful, sweeping images and that's its power."

While adapting a game experience to screen is similar to adapting a novel, it is not the same. A novel is often compacted, but this video game has been distilled. Akira Yamaoka, the creator of the Silent Hill video game, embraced the work of French surrealists, like Hans Bellmer and modern artists such as Francis Bacon, blending in a healthy serving of Kafka. "It's logical to approach a film version from a French surrealist point of view, which Christophe does," explains Mason. "In Silent Hill, there are layers and layers of story and every time you think you understand, something occurs that makes you reevaluate everything. Adapting this game is more about finding its essence, as well as taking as much familiar material as possible, retaining the intensity of the mystery and suspense."

"I cried when I played "Silent Hill 2," " recalls screenwriter Roger Avary. "It's a beautiful piece of art and it will always exist. But we had to disassemble it and create something new." Together Avary and Gans spent hours and hours studying not just story elements and details, but how the camera floats through the game. "The one element we always felt we must remain true to is the spirit of the material," Avary continues. "If not, then all is lost."

And what is the spirit of this fever dream called Silent Hill? Avary explains, "That was the one great and true struggle Christophe and I had. I believe in forgiveness and Christophe believes in justified revenge, and I think Christophe won." Comfortable with the results, Avary explains, "Christophe understands Silent Hill as well as, if not better than the creators of the game. First as a player, then as a writer and then a director, Christophe absorbed the necessary metaphorical elements of the material and then layered on his and my and everyone else's interpretation of the material. You could have had a million different filmmakers do their own interpretation of this, but there aren't any who are as media hungry as Christophe. He absorbs all manner of manga, novels, movies, TV shows, video games, and music. He was the one to make this movie because he lives and breathes the material."

Ultimately, Avary believes Silent Hill has a richly unclassifiable quality to it. "Is it a relationship drama? Is it science fiction? Is it atmospheric horror? Is it an apocalyptic film? What Christophe has created is unlike anything else that has been put to film. One of the things about Silent Hill is that it defines itself."

CASTING THE CHARACTERS

Christophe Gans approached casting by considering more subtle actors, those who would offer nuanced versions of the characters, and avoid the obvious. "All my actors belong to independent, educated cinema, which brings a certain cache to this film," explains Gans.

Radha Mitchell portrays Rose DaSilva, the mother of Sharon, a very troubled little girl whose sleepwalking takes her to dangerous places and who, while still asleep, keeps asking to be taken 'home to Silent Hill '. Against her husband's wishes, Rose takes Sharon to the abandoned town of Silent Hill in West Virginia to find answers. As they enter the town, Rose loses control of her car. When she regains consciousness, Sharon has disappeared and the search begins.

"Radha is a cross between Grace Kelly and Mia Farrow," says Gans. "She's playing a very rich woman who, until this film begins, has led an untroubled life. Radha brings something sophisticated and vulnerable to a character who is not initially sympathetic. She's elegant with a slightly 60s look which is, for me, very interesting. She is Rose and she is my Rose."

"The first time I read this script, I got ten pages into it and had to stop because I was too scared to keep reading," says Mitchell. "I did finish it, but only by reading it in the afternoon sunlight. It was a page-turner, to be sure, but it freaked me out. And that's the reason I took this part. As the film moves along, my character gets tougher and stronger. There's a joke on set that Christophe is our personal trainer because for the first few days it was 'Run, Radha, run'. It's very primal training."

" Silent Hill is a mystery unto itself," Mitchell notes. "It's the kind of film that doesn't have a conclusive finish so you're really on for the ride. There's something new to look at in every scene. Christophe's vision is so intense and so grand that this has been a great experience."

At the center of Silent Hill is Sharon, portrayed by 10 year-old Jodelle Ferland, noted for being the youngest nominee in the history of the Daytime Emmys. In Silent Hill she plays Sharon, Alessa and Dark Alessa, three girls who exist simultaneously, yet in vastly different time/space dimensions. Ferland's unique achievement was deconstructing these personas and then delivering three individual, captive performances. "When I was working on the script with Roger Avary," Gans recalls, "we were alarmed by what we had created because who was going to play it? We briefly considered the idea of triplets. But, based on her work in Kingdom Hospital and footage from Terry Gilliam's Tideland, we brought Jodelle in and she hit the spot on the first take. Every time. She's amazing because she's ten and she acts like the little girl that she is, but she's more. She has a brilliant mind." In fact, the filmmakers knew that Ferland was the right girl for the part when she walked into her audition and announced "I've always wanted to play the devil."

Gans nurtured Ferland's performances with a combination of charm and gentle direction, mixed with a peculiar dialect they invented that involved a lot of meowing. "Christophe is really nice," says Ferland. "I like him a lot. And playing three people isn't hard, but Dark Alessa wears a lot of makeup and her school uniform has a lot of gunk on it."

While the character of Rose is a new incarnation for Silent Hill, the Brahams police officer Cybil Bennett, played by Laurie Holden, is someone gamers will know well. Cybil is a loner and a survivor. Her religion failed to support her through a personal tragedy in her youth, but where faith fell short, Cybil's instinct to serve and protect leads her to eventually help Rose because she recognizes a kindred spirit in a woman trying to safeguard her child.

"This script is riveting," notes Holden, brimming with delight about every detail in the film. "It's spectacular - so many levels, so many complexities and so many wonderful themes permeating the story. Christophe is amazing. I feel blessed because he is such an artist. He is so respectful of the process in every way. He explores character development unlike any director I have ever worked with before. When I first arrived and was in hair and makeup, I asked him, 'This girl Cybil, what is she?' and he looked at me and said, 'You are my white wolf.' Not only did it explain it all, it created a clear path for me to become Cybil."

Gans had seen Holden in The Majestic, a film he defends enthusiastically. "In it, she was beautifully feminine and I cast her so I could show her other side, make her strong and sleek. Laurie on the screen is, for me, a perfect manga image brought to life."

Deborah Kara Unger, who plays Dahlia, and Christophe Gans have known each other since before Unger acted in David Cronenberg's Crash, a movie Gans recommended that she take. In the intervening years, Gans had hoped to work with her, but explains, "When you've known someone for a long time, you want to offer something amazing. When I proposed that she play a woman of seventy, one who was bizarre enough to frighten me, I thought that she'd throw the script in my face."

On the contrary, Unger leapt at the part. "Dahlia has a core essence akin to John Procter in The Crucible," she explains. "She is someone who did not speak out in time; someone who was blinded by faith and her silence caused injury. Dahlia has become wise through suffering. She functions in all of Silent Hill's worlds, bridging light and darkness as the prophet. She functions in an enigmatic way."

Unger expounds, "Dahlia is the most operatic part I've ever tackled. She's a more complicated character than I anticipated. Not that I underestimated her, but Christophe has conceptualized her in a much more layered fashion. This film is Alice in Wonderland meets Dante's Inferno."

Cristabella is the one character Gans finds difficult to discuss because of her intricacies. "Cristabella consciously decides not to be a mother and yet, she tends to her flock," he explains. She is also the catalyst of the story. To play Cristabella, Gans selected Alice Krige specifically because of her work in experimental films such as Institute Benjamenta and Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, and her mainstream work in Star Trek. "I knew in casting Alice that she'd have the ability to play her role with passion and strangeness. In confronting Radha's Rose, she has delivered Cristabella with a combination of elegance and violence."

Krige was enamored with both her role and her director. "Cristabella is the dominant, controlling figure of a religious sect with puritanical antecedents. They have a deep-seated belief that they are responsible for holding Satan and evil at bay." To prepare, Krige turned to Erna Paris' book, The End of Days, about the 300-year development of the Spanish inquisition, which bore its fruit under Isabella of Spain. "I thought this role would be difficult and it is. But Christophe has the most fertile and vivid imagination and a passion for telling a story layered with emotional content in the imagery of every frame."

Away from the fog and the Darkness of Silent Hill is another dimension - reality. There, Christopher DaSilva, played by Sean Bean, and Officer Gucci, played by Kim Coates, struggle to find Rose and Sharon.

"Sean's role is a difficult one," says Gans. "When you exclude the loving husband and father from the dimension where the women are fighting, it is by definition, romantic. He can only operate from his love for his wife and daughter, but do no more. He can only be in love and in pain, to search and to wait, trying to understand. I like that the central guy in the story shows his vulnerability, his tenderness."

"My character has lost his family and he just can't get any information," explains Sean Bean. "He's unaware of the evil going on, but he can feel it. He can sense it. And I think the heartbreak and despair starts to drive him crazy. Christophe has developed a world that is so vivid and so real that it's not difficult for me to put myself in Christopher's situation. He's very eloquent and very inspiring. Besides, he loves this bizarre, weird, wild stuff: he revels in it."

Kim Coates weighs in with his take on the Silent Hill experience, "I have to say this is by far the strangest movie I've ever done. It's two movies! Sean and I are in one; Radha and Laurie and Jodelle are in their movie. We never set foot in the worlds of fog and darkness. So Gucci's story is simpler: he has secrets, something that happened when he was young, and it changed him, but he keeps everything inside."

THE CREATURES OF SILENT HILL

Embodying the terror of Silent Hill are a panoply of vividly creepy entities: the relentlessly destructive, sword-wielding Red Pyramid, the harrowing Grey Children, the Armless ones, the mysterious Janitor, the Cockroaches and the Dark Nurses. Their combined effectiveness is the result of the harmonized efforts of acclaimed creature designer Patrick Tatopoulos in Los Angeles, prosthetic effects supervisor and co-designer Paul Jones in Toronto (who also was responsible for all 'organic' injury effects), costume designer Wendy Partridge, visual effects producer Holly Radcliffe, and movement consultant Roberto Campanella.

While the Cockroaches were entirely computer-generated images, Red Pyramid began as a Patrick Tatopoulos' design. "We stayed very close to the images in the game, but for me, it was all about proportions and elegance," explains Tatopoulos. "It's very simple: beautiful doesn't mean pretty. If you retain the elegance of the creature and some degree of humanity in the design, it becomes mesmerizing. The components of Red Pyramid were sent to Toronto and Paul Jones' team took over the implementation, including working with costume designer Wendy Partridge to build the skin skirt and boots with 15-inch platforms worn by Roberto Campanella, one slightly lower than the other to create a truncated gait."

The Grey Child, which was multiplied in post-production to create a Grey horde, was Tatopolous' favorite project. A body suit for petite dancer Yvonne Ng was crafted out of spandex, with silicone sprayed on to create a translucent skin. Ng's deliberate posture accentuated the design of the infant's belly and sway back, but it was the face which held the creation's truest artistry. Adds Tatopoulos, "Christophe wanted each creature to be sensual and to have the sense that they are constantly screaming. Grey Child's face is human, elongated, twisted, with the skin slipping back with a mouth stretching into an eternal howl."

Dancer Michael Koda played the Armless one, and Tatopoulos' design was intended to stress functionality for the performer. "Even though the Armless does not have a mouth, under his skin you can still feel his perpetual scream," explains Tatopolous. Finally, there were the Nurses, notable for their ashen uniforms, which seem to grow out of their skin, and a lack of features on their faces. Layered onto that image is their movement: marionette-like, frozen in time, coming to life when light appears in the darkness of the hospital.

The character of the Janitor was added during production, and Paul Jones designed and built both the mummified version found in the fog world, and the living, crawling twisted being who appears in the Darkness. Jones' own long history of playing the game enabled him to find a design which tapped into familiar themes, including a disturbing use of barbed wire. "Disturbing, not disgusting" became a mantra of sorts for Gans when it came to the visual and prosthetic effects, says Jones. "It's very easy to gross you out," he says. "The trick for Christophe was to have it still be visceral and disturbing, but something you can't take your eyes off. He doesn't want people to turn away. He wants people to be entranced, but have the same kind of horror in their eyes."

All the creatures were further digitally manipulated in post production. The Grey Children's skin was treated to resemble burn victims, Armless' limbs were elongated and distorted, the Janitor's legs were twisted, and the Nurses' movements were time-shifted. But Jones takes pains to point out that they are performances first and foremost, and that without the dance-infused portrayals by Campanella, Koda and Ng - who had never played creatures before -- all would be lost. "It's a very tough job being a creature in a movie, it's no fun at all," says Jones. "You're covered in a cumbersome costume that makes you sweat incredibly, and it can be physically uncomfortable to hold positions for long amounts of time. But they were so cool and so much fun and they never complained once. They made my job so much easier."

BUILDING A FOUR-DIMENSIONAL SILENT HILL

Realizing the special, strange world of Silent Hill required the coordination of physical set design with the virtual capabilities of CGI. The narrative space of Silent Hill consists of four dimensions: reality in the Silent Hill of 30 years before, reality in present day, the Fog world, and the Darkness.

Born in the 1960s, the great period of the big epic adventure films, Gans has long been inspired by the impact of the cinemascope image on a physical environment. "There was something grand about those films," he says. "It was much more about being in a different place, Lawrence of Arabia, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. I enjoy the scale of the human being on the giant set."

For Silent Hill, Gans was excited about creating a complete town, but not inside a computer: one that he and the actors could see and touch and be inspired by. The filmmakers took over a Canadian town and completely transformed it. "We created it with more than 100 sets," says Gans. "And that makes it real, strangely real. That's my old fashioned style. But there are visual effects, because it's impossible to do a film like this without them."

Gans initiated the design process with his own storyboards, which were based on the concept of Japanese manga comics (graphic novels). Unlike Western comics which are based around superhero themes, manga have an advanced story structure, utilizing depictive image-making techniques that imitate cinema, such as zooming, scene "panning", and stills/close-ups of characters.

As a result, Gans' brief to production designer Carol Spier was incredibly comprehensive. "I work with very precise storyboards," he explains. "I like to design each of my shots because dealing with three different dimensions, often superimposed on each other, you have to be extremely clear, otherwise the audience will be lost. I first test my vision on a storyboard and then move to camera. Because I work from specific angles, the sets can have a high level of detail."

Spier worked from those storyboards to create a world wrecked by time. Decayed settings are the environment for 80% of the film, varying between the deterioration of the Fog state and the corroded, decomposed conditions of the Darkness state. In some cases, real buildings were altered for the movie's purposes, such as the factory set and the school set, and in other cases, sets were built from scratch, such as the massive church - which took eight weeks to construct -- and the mountain road that leads into Silent Hill, which was created in a studio.

One of the best finds, Spier says, was a street in Brantford, Ontario to duplicate Silent Hill's empty thoroughfare. "A lot of sections of the street had closed down because they were going to renovate it," says Spier. "We were able to go in and redress windows and change colors and take away signs we didn't want to see, and make it look like the town had been abandoned for thirty years. And we had considerable help from the people in Brantford. We worked in great detail to raise the two-dimensional world of the video game into the three-dimensional world of Silent Hill." Spier's primary inspiration were places that had been left to age and decay, so she perused extensive photographs from the Chernobyl disaster and eerie, abandoned psychiatric hospitals in upstate New York. Taking Spier's work further were artists at several visual effects facilities, including Buf Compagnie in Paris, and Mr. X Inc. and C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures, Inc.in Toronto, all led by visual effects producer Holly Radcliffe.

As appreciative as audiences will be of these sets and the sweeping cinematography, it was the actors who were overwhelmingly grateful that almost all principal photography was shot in real environments. "I may not have been a good enough gamer to play Silent Hill very well, but for three months on these incredible sets, I have been living there," says Radha Mitchell. "It's a visual feast."

SILENT HILL

ABOUT THE CAST

RADHA MITCHELL (Rose DaSilva) was most recently seen in Finding Neverland, for which she and her co-stars Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet and Dustin Hoffman were nominated for a Screen Actors Guild ensemble award. The film was directed by Marc Forster (Monster's Ball), with whom she worked in 2000 when she starred and produced the Independent Spirit Award-nominated film Everything Put Together.

Mitchell was also recently seen in the starring role of 'Melinda' in Woody Allen's film Melinda and Melinda, opposite Will Ferrell and Chloe Sevigny.

In 2004, Mitchell starred opposite Denzel Washington in Man on Fire, playing the mother of a missing child who had been kidnapped. She starred opposite Colin Farrell in Joel Shumacher's Phone Booth and in the box-office hit Pitch Black opposite Vin Diesel. The actress gave a memorable performance as Syd, the young editorial assistant who falls in love with Ally Sheedy's heroin-addicted photographer character in Lisa Cholodenko's critically acclaimed drama High Art. Her role in Emma-Kate Croghan's romantic comedy Love and Other Catastrophes was highly praised at both the Cannes and Sundance film festivals.

Other recent film credits include When Strangers Appear with Josh Lucas, the independent feature Dead Heat opposite Keifer Sutherland and Anthony LaPaglia, Nobody's Baby with Gary Oldman and Skeet Ulrich, and Rodrigo Garcia's Ten Tiny Love Stories. On television, she starred with Hank Azaria and Donald Sutherland in NBC's critically acclaimed mini-series Uprising for director Jon Avnet

Up next for Mitchell is Petter Naess' Mozart and the Whale, written by Ron Bass (Rain Man), starring opposite Josh Hartnett. A dramatic, romantic comedy, Mozart and the Whale is inspired by the lives of two people with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, whose emotional dysfunctions threaten to sabotage their budding romance.

SEAN BEAN (Christopher DaSilva) gained international recognition for his work as Boromir in the Academy AwardR winning Lord of the Rings trilogy, starring in both The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. But while Boromir may be his best-known role to date, that portrayal is truly only one in a career that includes 35 films, acclaimed stage performances and one of the most successful television franchises in British TV history.

Originally from Sheffield, Bean worked with his father as a welder before turning to acting, and even in his most sophisticated roles he retains the hard masculine edge of a man who once sweat for a living. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, and then moved to film and a breakout role in 1990's The Field opposite Richard Harris in an unforgettable and critically acclaimed drama. In 1992 he won rave reviews in Patriot Games, starring opposite Harrison Ford in a provocative and complex portrayal of the tragic antagonist.

A detour from feature films came when he was cast as Bernard Cornwall's beloved hero of the Napoleonic Wars, Richard Sharpe. Like the novel on which it was based, the 1993 telefilm Sharpe's Rifles was so popular that it spawned sequel after sequel, and by 1997, with 15 Sharpe films completed, Bean was one of the best-known and most sought-after stars in the UK, with legions of fans and dozens of websites devoted to following his every move.

So it was back to feature film, where he dazzled audiences in films as varied as Tom & Thomas, Essex Boys, Ronin and Anna Karenina. He most recently starred in Disney's blockbuster National Treasure opposite Nicolas Cage for director Jon Turteltaub. Other recent films include a most heroic Odysseus in Wolfgang Peterson's epic Troy, alongside Brad Pitt, Eric Bana and Orlando Bloom; the independent The Big Empty with Jon Favreau; the sci-fi thriller Equilibrium with Christian Bale; and 20th Century Fox's Don't Say a Word opposite Michael Douglas.

On stage, he won rave reviews last year in London's West End in an acclaimed production of Macbeth, in which he starred opposite Samantha Bond. Classically trained, he also recently appeared in Henry VIII for Granada opposite Ray Winstone and Helena Bonham Carter, and has appeared in many productions at The Royal Court Theatre, Glasgow Citizen Theatre and the RSC.

Bean was most recently seen in The Island with Ewan MacGregor and Scarlett Johansson, and Flight Plan with Jodie Foster and Peter Sarsgaard. Voted by readers of Empire Magazine "the second sexiest man in England," Bean escapes madness by working non-stop in films around the world, and rooting for Sheffield United wherever satellite reception allows.

LAURIE HOLDEN's (Cybil) acting career reads like a Cinderella story. While performing on stage at the world renowned Larry Moss Acting Studio, she was discovered by Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile) who thought she was perfect for the lead in his capra-esque drama, The Majestic. Holden's captivating feature film debut starring as Jim Carrey's long lost love in the film was met with critical acclaim by the New York Times and film critics around the world. This film introduced audiences to her natural onscreen presence, which Darabont called "fresh, awesome - like an old Hollywood film star with a lovely twist." Indeed, keeping things fresh is Holden's passion and she's created an arsenal of memorable characters in film and television since she began her career as a child. She appeared in last summer's successful comic-action adventure, The Fantastic Four starring opposite Michael Chiklis' portrayal of 'The Thing.' She recently shot the indie family film, Bailey's Millions with Tim Curry, Jon Lovitz, Jennifer Tilly and Dean Cain and is attached to star in another indie opposite Ben Kingsley, The Knights of Impossingworth Park.

A dual citizen of Canada and the U.S., Holden's career got off to the kind of start most actors can only dream of. Upon graduating from UCLA with honors, Holden received the "Natalie Wood Acting Award" for Best Actress. She went on to study the classics on the London stage at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. She co-starred in the TNT mini-series Young Catherine with Vanessa Redgrave, and gained notoriety playing 'Marita Covarubbias,' the UN Informant to Fox Mulder, on the long-running hit The X-Files. Her episodic work includes a comedic turn in the critically acclaimed Due South, for which she was nominated for a Gemini Award (Canada's Emmy). Holden also starred as the only female lead opposite Michael Biehn in the remake of the MGM classic The Magnificent Seven for CBS.

DEBORAH KARA UNGER (Dahlia) was most recently seen starring opposite Michael Keaton in White Noise, Thomas Jane in Bronwen Hughes' Stander, John Travolta and Scarlett Johansson in A Love Song for Bobby Long, and Sir Ian McKellen in Carl Bessai's Emile (for which she received the 2004 Geraldine Page Best Actress Award at the American Method Festival).

In 2003 she received a Best Actress Canadian Academy Award nomination starring opposite screen legend Sophia Loren in Edoardo Ponti's Between Strangers, with Mira Sorvino and Gerard Depardieu, and completed three feature films including 1.0 which screened in official competition at 2004's Sundance Film Festival.

Since graduating from the prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Art in Australia (as the first Canadian to be accepted), she has co-starred in such films as: Norman Jewison's Hurricane with Denzel Washington, Payback with Mel Gibson, David Fincher's The Game with Michael Douglas and Sean Penn, David Cronenberg's Crash with Holly Hunter and James Spader (Special Jury Prize in Official Competition in Cannes), and Istvan Szabo's award-winning epic Sunshine with Ralph Fiennes and William Hurt, which garnered her a 2000 Genie nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Other feature film credits include: Thirteen with Holly Hunter, The Salton Sea with Val Kilmer, Signs and Wonders with Stellan Skarsgard and Charlotte Rampling, Leo with Joseph Fiennes and Dennis Hopper, Fear X with John Turturro , No Way Home, with Tim Roth, Bette Gordon's critically acclaimed Luminous Motion, and The Weekend with Gena Rowlands, which received the 1999 Best Ensemble Acting Award at the Seattle Film Festival.

Upcoming releases include Alibi with Rebecca Romijn and Steve Coogan, and Things That Hang from Trees with Ray McKinnon and Laila Robbins. Ms. Unger made her feature film debut in the award-winning WWII drama Prisoners of the Sun with Russell Crowe. On television, Ms. Unger appeared as Ava Gardner in HBO's 1998 drama, The Rat Pack, and in the award-winning mini-series Bangkok Hilton with Nicole Kidman. In September 2004, Deborah Kara Unger received the Award of Excellence from Russia's Vladivostok International Film Festival and in April 2004, she received the Imagery Award at Cinema Epicuria. In May 2003, Ms. Unger was honored as the recipient of the Libertae Award at the Dubrovnik International Film Festival for her ongoing work in and commitment to the spirit of independence in film.

KIM COATES (Officer Gucci) Canadian born actor Kim Coates has the distinction of successfully entering the film and television industry in Canada, and also crossing the border and expanding his ever growing repertoire into noted feature films which have been given international acclaim and great critical reviews.

With over 30 films to his credit, including Hostage with Bruce Willis, Assault on Precinct 13 opposite Ethan Hawke, Open Range starring and directed by Kevin Costner with Robert Duvall and Annette Benning, Hollywood North with Matthew Modine and Alan Bates, Nine Lives with Wesley Snipes, Academy AwardR winners Black Hawk Down directed by Ridley Scott, and Pearl Harbor directed by Michael Bay, this actor has managed to transcend the barriers between stage, television and film. His talents have been utilized on Broadway in his portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire; and in the title role in Macbeth at the legendary Stratford Theatre. He has had roles in more than 20 made for television movies, such as Disney's Scream Team with Eric Idle, Thoughtcrimes with Joe Flannigan and the award winning series Fallen Angels with Bill Pullman. These dramatic turns on television have garnered him Gemini nominations for Best Actor in a Featured Supporting Role for Dead Silence and Best Performance in a Guest Role Dramatic Series for The Outer Limits. Coates recently completed filming the NBC mini series Hercules, the Lifetime MOW Friend of the Family and Grilled opposite Ray Romano.

Coates has continually proven himself to be a leading force in the world of acting and his versatile volume of work speaks for itself. His strong acting ethic means that he is an actor who cannot be stereotyped and this has brought him critical acclaim. Coates currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife and their two children.

TANYA ALLEN (Anna) is perhaps best known as the sardonic intern in Ken Finkleman's award-winning series, The Newsroom (for which she won the Gemini Award for best performance in a Comedy). After attending the prestigious American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, she launched her professional acting career in her late teens, starting with appearances on such series as The Adventures of Shirley Holmes and Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. Allen received a Gemini nomination (the Canadian Emmys) for her role in 1994 TV movie Lives of Girls & Women. It was her performance in the title role in the Canadian TV movie Lyddie, a historical drama about a teenage girl who leaves her poverty-stricken family to work in a cotton mill; followed by a lead in CBS comedy The Newsroom that moved Allen into the public eye. She then played the lead role of 'Sarah' in the World War II drama Regeneration, opposite from Jonathan Pryce and Jonny Lee Miller. The following year she moved to New York, and starred in Bruce McDonald's Platinum (which earned her a Gemini nomination for Best Actress), Clutch opposite Tom Green, Liberty Stands Still opposite Wesley Snipes and Linda Fiorentino and White Lies with Sarah Polley. Allen's role as the emotionally stunted but brilliant 'space waif' Percy on Starhunter made her a favorite with sci-fi fans all over the world. She reprised the role of Percy on Starhunter 2300: and then took to the ice in Kari Skogland's hockey comedy/drama Chicks with Sticks.

ALICE KRIGE (Cristabella) was born in Upington, South Africa. After four years at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, she went on to study acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. Her first professional performance was in 1979's Play for Today for the BBC. In 1980, Krige made her feature film debut as 'Sybil Gordon' in the Academy AwardR winning film, Chariots of Fire. Krige then appeared in the 1980 television adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, which was followed by her memorable, dual role as the avenging spirit in 1981's Ghost Story. Also in 1981, Alice debuted in a West End theatre production of George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man, for which she received the honors of both a Plays and Players Award and a Laurence Olivier Award for Most Promising Newcomer.

Krige decided to focus on working with the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company where she performed in King Lear, The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew and Cyrano de Bergerac. She then appeared in a diverse range of films, including King David, Barfly, Haunted Summer, Code Name: Chaos and See You in the Morning. Her work in television includes the critically acclaimed mini-series, Ellis Island and Wallenberg: A Hero's Story.

In addition to numerous roles in television, including appearances on Beverly Hills, 90210 and Becker, Krige also appeared in the films Sleepwalkers, Institute Benjamenta, Amanda, Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, Habitat, The Commissioner and Molokai: The Story of Father Damien. One notable standout, was the film Star Trek: First Contact, for which Ms. Krige won a 1997 Saturn Award for her portrayal of the 'Borg Queen'.

The new millennium finds Ms. Krige with several projects to her credit, which include such works as The Little Vampire, Star Trek Voyager: End Game, Attila, Dinotopia, Reign of Fire and Children of Dune. Recent projects include Shadow of Fear, a Natalie Wood bio-film, the Borg Invasion 4D theme park attraction, a film about the 1980's television series Dynasty, a recurring role on the HBO series Deadwood, and the yet to be released feature, Lonely Hearts. Krige was recently awarded an honorary doctorate in literature from Rhodes University and she is producing her first feature film.

JODELLE FERLAND (Sharon, Alessa, Dark Alessa) At the tender age of 10, Jodelle Ferland has built up an impressive resume filled with roles in film, television, radio, voice work, and commercials. Born in 1994 in Nanaimo, British Columbia, she got her television start in an episode of CTV's Cold Squad (1998). It wasn't long before she landed a lead role in her first film, Mermaid (1999), at the age of four. Her portrayal of the heartbroken "Desi" earned her a Daytime EmmyR Award nomination, making her the youngest nominee in history. That performance also earned her a Young Artist Award of Hollywood. Since then, she has appeared in almost 30 more films and television series, including: Dean Koontz's Sole Survivor (1999), Special Delivery (2000), Deadly Little Secrets (2000), Trapped (2001), Miracle of The Cards (2001), The Christmas Child (2002), Mob Princess (2002), They (2002), and Carrie (2002), and has made guest appearances on Dark Angel (2000), Smallville (2001), and The Collector (2004). Ferland can also be seen starring in Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital (2004), playing a tortured young girl who haunts the hospital's halls. In 2004, she landed the lead role of Jeliza-Rose in Terry Gilliam's Tideland (2005), a film about a disturbed young girl who finds solace in her own imagination after the death of her mother. When not performing, Ferland spends her time with family and loves to hang out with her friends.

SILENT HILL

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

CHRISTOPHE GANS (Director) Born in 1960 in Antibes, France, Gans was an early convert to film fandom. As a teenager, he made Super-8 samurai and kung fu films and in the late 1970s, he published the fanzine, Rhesus Zero, sharing his passion for sci-fi, kung fu and other genre films with others. In 1980, Gans studied at the French cinema school Idhec (Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematopraphiques) and directed a short film called Silver Slime, a tribute to Mario Bava, which was well received at the 1982 Paris Festival.

In 1982, he also founded the magazine Starfix and championed the work of directors like David Cronenberg, Dario Argento, Russel Mulcahy, David Lynch, John Carpenter and Sergio Leone. Initially working on an adaptation of Liberatore's underground cult comic, RanXerox, Gans then wrote and directed a segment of Samuel Hadida's1994's production of H.P. Lovecraft's The Necronomicon. Gans' segment, Hotel of the Drowned, convinced the Japanese creator and investors that he was the perfect choice to direct the live-action adaptation of their successful manga and anime series, Crying Freeman. Crying Freeman, also produced by Hadida, won the Audience Award at the 1995 Sweden Fantastic Film Festival and was nominated for the 1996 International Fantasy Film Award at Fantasporto.

Gans went on to create for Metropolitan the video collection, "HK", devoted to Hong Kong movies. He then worked for two years on a free adaptation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues under the Sea before directing Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le Pacte des loups) about the Beast of Gevaudan, an unknown animal who killed more than one hundred people in France at the end of 18th century. Released in 2001, Brotherhood of the Wolf was nominated for a Saturn Award and Best Director at the 2002 Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, the Grand Prize of European Fantasy Film in Gold at the 2002 Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film, and won a Cesar (the French Academy-AwardR) for Best Costume Design as well as the Grand Prize of European Fantasy Film in Silver at the 2001 Catalonian International Film Festival, Sitges, Spain in addition to being nominated for Best Film at that festival.

ROGER AVARY (Screenwriter) Born in Canada, unrelenting gonzo filmmaker Roger Avary has captured both the mainstream of Hollywood as well as the fringe of indie cinema with his aggressive and unique filmmaking style. A former video store clerk from Manhattan Beach, California, Avary is a self-proclaimed charter member of what he calls "the video store generation." The first generation of information age filmmakers with complete and total access to a database of tens of thousands of films at any given moment...something no other generation before his can claim. In 1994 his first feature film, the cult classic, Killing Zoe, produced by Hadida, garnered in France the Prix Tres Special and won the best film awards at Japan's Yubari International Film Festival, and Italy's MystFest. The film was released by New York-based October Films and has won favorable, if not heated, reviews. The film has been hailed by Daily Variety, Cahiers du Cinema, and the Village Voice as one of the finest debut films of the last twenty years. His second film was a bold and visually striking adaptation of Bret Easton-Ellis' novel, The Rules of Attraction. The film was such a creative success that Roger Avary and Greg Shapiro have optioned the rights to Bret Easton-Ellis' novel Glamorama. The film is currently in development under Shapiro's production banner, Kingsgate Films. He has also completed work on Robert Zemeckis's upcoming animated feature, Beowulf.

Avary also collaborated with director Quentin Tarantino as co-author of his Cannes Film Festival Palm d'Or winner Pulp Fiction. In 1995 the two shared best writing accolades from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics' Circle, the Boston Society of Film Critics, the National Society of Film Critics, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the British Academy of Film and Television for their work on Pulp Fiction. This phenomenal success has led to a prolific writing career for Avary, working at Warner Brothers, Paramount, Dreamworks, and others. Avary has been very active as a producer, both on his television projects, and the independent films Boogie Boy and The Last Man. Avary is a spokesperson for Apple Computer and their prosumer editing software, Final Cut Pro, with which he edited his 35mm feature The Rules of Attraction. An avid Apple evangelist, Avary's full page spreads have appeared worldwide in Daily Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Post Magazine, Rez Magazine, Videography Magazine, Millimeter Magazine, and many more. He dropped out of the Art Center College of Design, screaming at one of his professors, "You don't need a degree to study film!" He now lectures yearly at the Art Center. Avary collects and restores vintage Atari X-Y monitor arcade machines, as some people might specialize in restoring old automobiles. Avary is currently editing his digital video feature of the footage shot in Europe for Victor's travels, to be titled Glitterati. He is also preparing the screenplay for his next film as director.

SAMUEL HADIDA (Producer) is one of the most successful producers and distributors in the worldwide film business today. From his home base in Paris, he and his brother, Victor, have grown Metropolitan FilmExport, founded in the early 1980s by the brothers and their father, David, into the largest and most successful independent all-rights distribution company of English language pictures in France. Metropolitan has distributed hundreds of successful films in France, continuing through The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Through the growth of this distribution business, Hadida has developed a keen understanding of distribution and marketing. It was then an easy step for Hadida to move into producing his own films. His first production was True Romance, the first film produced from a Quentin Tarantino script and his first collaboration with director Tony Scott. Hadida now produces or co-produces several films each year through Davis Films, the production company owned and operated by himself and Victor. These productions encompass the best of the French industry, European productions and co-productions, and American productions. In addition to Silent Hill, Hadida most recently produced Tony Scott's Domino with Kiera Knightley and Mickey Rourke. Hadida is also the producer of Resident Evil and Resident Evil: The Apocalypse starring Milla Jovovich, The Bridge of San Luis Rey with Robert De Niro, and Fabian Bielinsky's thriller El Aura. He was co-executive producer on George Clooney's Academy Award nominated Good Night and Good Luck. Hadida has had a long collaboration with writer-director Roger Avary, having produced Avary's first directing venture, Killing Zoe (with Jean-Hugues Anglade and Julie Delpy) and executive producing his Rules of Attraction. It was natural that Hadida reached out to Avary to write the screenplay for Silent Hill. Hadida has a long association with Christophe Gans. He produced Gans' first film, Necronomicon, his next film Crying Freeman, as well as the phenomenally successful Le Pacte des Loups (Brotherhood of the Wolf), one of the highest grossing French films of all time and nominated for four Cesar Awards and eight Saturn Awards. The decision to make Silent Hill together solidifies their successfully enduring relationship. Other Hadida productions include David Cronenberg's acclaimed psychological thriller Spider starring Ralph Fiennes and Miranda Richardson, Sheldon Lettich's Only the Strong (the first Capoeira/martial arts film, and the film which introduced both Mark Dacascos and the famous score music now popularized in the United States in the "zoom zoom zoom" Mazda car commercials), Michael Radford's Dancing at the Blue Iguana, Steve Barron's Pinocchio with Martin Landau (one of the first films to combine computer-generated images and live action), Matthew Bright's Freeway (winner of the top award at the Cognac Festival and Reese Witherspoon's first role), and Gabriele Salvatores' Nirvana. Upcoming projects include Onimusha, the adaptation of the successful Capcom video game, as well as Judge Dee, adapted from the famous series of books by author Robert van Gulik.

DON CARMODY (Producer) has been producing films for close to 30 years. He was vice-president of production for Canada's Cinepix (now Lionsgate Films), where he co-produced David Cronenberg's early shockers They Came From Within and Rabid as well as the popular comedy Meatballs.

Starting his own production company in 1980, Carmody went on to produce the smash hits Porky's and Porky's II, the perennially popular A Christmas Story as well as Spacehunter: Adventures In The Forbidden Zone, Whispers, The Big Town, Physical Evidence, Switching Channels and several Chuck Norris films, including The Hitman and Sidekicks.

He returned to comedy successfully with the Weekend at Bernies series, and The Late Shift for HBO, which was nominated for seven EmmyR Awards, three Cable Ace awards and the Producers' Guild of America Golden Laurel. The Late Shift also won a Golden Globe for actress Kathy Bates and a Directors' Guild Award for Betty Thomas.

His credits include some 75 films thus far, including Johnny Mnemonic with Keanu Reeves, The Mighty with Sharon Stone, Studio 54 with Mike Myers, the Academy AwardR nominated Good Will Hunting with Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Robin Williams, In Too Deep with L.L. Cool J, the cult hit The Boondock Saints with Willem Dafoe, The Third Miracle with Ed Harris and Anne Heche, Get Carter with Sylvester Stallone, The Whole Nine Yards with Bruce Willis and Mathew Perry, The Pledge directed by Sean Penn and starring Jack Nicholson, 3000 Miles to Graceland with Kevin Costner and Courtney Cox, Caveman's Valentine with Samuel Jackson, Angel Eyes with Jennifer Lopez, David Mamet's The Heist with Gene Hackman, and Danny DeVito, City by the Sea with Robert DeNiro and Frances McDormand, Wrong Turn with Eliza Dushku, Gothika starring Halle Berry, Penelope Cruz and Robert Downey Jr., Resident Evil based on the all time bestselling video game and Resident Evil: Apocalypse starring Milla Jovovich, and Assault on Precinct 13 with Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne, Gabriel Byrne and Maria Bello. He is executive producing Lucky Number Slevin with Bruce Willis, Josh Hartnett and Morgan Freeman and producing Skinwalkers in Toronto. Both will be released in 2006.

In 2002 Carmody was co-producer of the hit film musical of Chicago starring Rene Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Richard Gere, which won seven Academy AwardsR including Best Picture, three Golden Globe Awards, including Best Musical or Comedy and the Producers' Guild of America Golden Laurel Award for Best Picture as well as many, other awards and citations around the world.

Carmody was born in New England and emigrated to Canada with his parents as a boy. He graduated from film school in Montreal and has gone on to produce films all over the world. He currently lives in Toronto and Los Angeles.

ANDREW MASON (Executive Producer) Mason spent 2004 in Romania producing, with Lakeshore's Tom Rosenberg and Gary Lucchesi, the horror thriller The Cave, starring Cole Hauser, Marcel Iures and Lena Headey. The directorial debut for Australian Bruce Hunt, the film was released by Screen Gems in August 2005.

Mason began his industry career in the early 1970's as a film editor in documentaries and commercials. He moved into producing, and headed a highly successful TV commercial production company. He formed Australia's first visual effects company in 1983, and worked as visual effects supervisor on a number of Australian films. He returned to producing and, in 1990, joined forces with director Alex Proyas, producing numerous music videos & commercials directed by Proyas. In 1993 Mason served as visual effects supervisor and second unit director on Proyas' The Crow.

In 1996 Mason produced Dark City for Proyas, released by New Line Cinema in 1998. He followed this with The Matrix, directed by the Wachowski Brothers and produced with Joel Silver and Barrie Osborne. He served as Executive Producer of Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions.

Mason executive produced three Warner Bros. Pictures released in 2002/3: the live-action Scooby Doo starring Matthew Lillard, Freddie Prinze Jr, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Linda Cardellini, Queen Of The Damned starring Stuart Townsend, and Kangaroo Jack starring Jerry O'Connell and Estella Warren. He served as executive producer on the Warner/Village Roadshow 2001 release Red Planet. He also executive produced Bristol Bay/Crusader Entertainment's Swimming Upstream starring Judy Davis and Geoffrey Rush, released by MGM in February 2005.

In 2003, Mason's City Productions produced Danny Deckchair, a romantic comedy starring Rhys Ifans and Miranda Otto, written and directed by Jeff Balsmeyer. Lions Gate released the film in July 2004.

Mason is a member of the board of the Macquarie Film Corporation, established by Australia's Macquarie Bank to fund Australian film and television projects, and is deputy chair on the board of the New South Wales State Film and Television Office.

VICTOR HADIDA (Executive Producer) served as executive producer of David Cronenberg's acclaimed psychological thriller Spider, starring Ralph Fiennes and Miranda Richardson, chosen as an Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival. Furthermore, Hadida was the executive producer of the Resident Evil franchise and Christopher Gans' Crying Freeman. He also served as executive producer on Tony Scott's Domino, Mary McGuckian's The Bridge of San Luis Rey, based on the Pulitzer prize winning novel by Thornton Wilder, and Avi Nesher's Turn Left at the End of the World. He is co-executive producer of George Clooney's Academy Award nominated Good Night and Good Luck.

AKIRA YAMAOKA (Executive Producer) has composed music for dozens of Konami video games. Yamaoka attended Tokyo Art College, where he studied product and interior design. He started his career as a freelance music composer and eventually joined Konami on September 21, 1993. He is most well known for his work on the Silent Hill series of video games, for which he composed all the music and created all of the sound effects in all four games. He also played the central role of Producer for the games Silent Hill 3 and 4, and additionally he has worked on the sound and music for other popular franchises from Konami. Recently, Akira Yamaoka has released his first solo album and has also contributed music to the Silent Hill feature film.

DAN LAUSTSEN (Director of Photography) has photographed some 30 movies, many in his native Denmark, with perhaps his best known credits being the features Brotherhood of the Wolf, The league of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Mimic, and Giselle. Laustsen's many other credits include Nomad, Darkness Falls, Don't Peek, I Am Dina, which won the award for Best Cinematography at the Robert Festival, Heart of Light, and Running Free.

The Danish-born Laustsen also served as Director of Cinematography on Gummi-Tarzan, earning him the Special Award at the Bodil Awards, Miraklet i Valby, and Isfugle both of which won awards for Best Cinematography at the Robert Fesival. Laustsen studied still photography and was working as a fashion photographer when he decided to attend the Danish Film School for three years. He shot his first feature at age 25 in Denmark. The dailies on his first American film, Miramax's Nightwatch, caught the eye of Guillermo del Toro, who hired him on Mimic.

CAROL SPIER (Production Designer) is perhaps best known for her longtime association with director David Cronenberg. Her collaborations with Cronenberg include A History of Violence, eXistenz, Crash, M. Butterfly, Naked Lunch, Dead Ringers, The Fly, The Dead Zone, Videodrome, Scanners, The Brood and Fast Company as well as two television docudramas for CBC: Scales of Justice. She received Genie Awards for both Naked Lunch and Dead Ringers and Genie nominations for The Brood, Videodrome, Scanners and eXistenZ.

Her numerous other feature film credits include The Man, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Noel, Mimic, Joe's Apartment, The Santa Clause, Canadian Bacon, Consenting Adults, Where The Heart Is, Renegades, Sing, Search and Destroy, Running Brave and I Miss Your Hugs and Kisses which, in 1976, marked her first film as a production designer.

For television, Spier designed the PBS/CBC series Anne of Green Gables, for which she won a Gemini Award for Best Art Direction, Showtime's Gotham, for which she received a nomination for an ACE award for Best Art Direction, the CBS MOW Escape From Iran; and the PBS/American Playhouse production of Overdrawn at the Memory Bank.

Spier is Canadian-born and studied Interior Design at the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Architecture. She began her professional career as an interior designer in Winnipeg, Manitoba. During this period she also worked as a set and costume Designer with various theater groups, including the Manitoba Theater Center.

She began her motion picture career with The Mourning Suit, on which she served as set designer, set dresser, and property master. She then moved to Toronto, where she worked as an assistant art director on several feature films, including Equus and Why Shoot the Teacher, before serving as art director on such films as Norman Jewison's Agnes of God and John Schlesinger's The Believers.

SEBASTIEN PRANGERE (Editor) was born in Paris. After graduating from the ESRA film school in Paris (1991), he went on to editing short films, trailers and documentaries including Perfect Day, Numero 26, Benson & Edges, 4eme sous sol, and Dans la nuit. Prangere made his feature film editing debut with Christophe Gans' Brotherhood of the Wolf in 2001 and Guts of the Beast, a behind-the-scenes documentary directed by Pascal Laugier. He then worked again with Pascal Laugier for his first feature film, Saint Ange, and has edited Broceliande directed by Doug Headline and 9A for director Reza Rezai.

In addition to his editing work, Prangere has been directing documentaries and supervising DVDs for companies such as Metropolitan & Studio Canal.

PATRICK TATOPOULOS (Creature Designer and Supervisor) is undoubtedly one of the top creature and special effects designers currently working in movies. His impressive resume includes Creature Designer and Supervisor on I, Robot,Godzilla, Independence Day, Stargate, Pitch Black, They, Saint Sinner, Cursed, Supernova, Super Mario Bros and both Underworld and Underworld Evolution. He also created the animatronic mice used in Stuart Little. Tatopoulos worked as a conceptual creature artist on Van Helsing and The Chronicles Of Riddick, and the upcoming Eragon. He was a visual consultant on AVP: Alien vs. Predator, and a set conceptual artist on Dracula, The Doors, Se7en, and The Librarian: Quest for the Spear. To round out his impressive design talents, Tatopoulos created new worlds as the Production Designer of Underworld Evolution, I, Robot, Independence Day, Dark City, and the TV series, "Special Unit 2." A man of many talents, he even designed some of the costumes on Stargate.

WENDY PARTRIDGE (Costume Designer) started off by dressing her dolls at the age of seven and has gone on to design for some of the most exciting films in the last five years including Underworld and Underworld Evolution, starring Kate Beckinsale, The Cave, starring Cole Hauser, Marcel Iures and Lena Headey, Fantastic Four, starring Julian McMahon and Jessica Alba, Hellboy, for which she received a 2004 Best Costumes nomination for Best Costumes from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, and Blade II, starring Wesley Snipes. Additional credits include Texas Rangers, Snow Day, Come L'America for which received a 2001 Genie nomination for Best Costume Design, and Loyalties, for which she won a 1986 Genie Award for Best Costume Design.

JEFF DANNA's (Music) film credits include Terry Gilliam's Tideland, Roger Spottiswoode's Spinning Boris, starring Jeff Goldblum, Anthony LaPaglia and Liev Schreiber, The Gospel of John with Christopher Plummer and directed by Philip Saville, O, featuring Mekhi Phifer, Josh Hartnett and Julia Stiles, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, starring Milla Jovovich, Green Dragon and The Boondock Saints. Danna was the composer for the Robert Evans documentary The Kid Stays in the Picture. On television, Danna has scored the music for the made-for-television movies "Ice Bound," starring Susan Sarandon, "A Wrinkle in Time," "Mafia Doctor" with Paul Sorvino and Olympia Dukakis, Roger Spottiswoode's "The Matthew Shepard Story," featuring Stockard Channing and Sam Waterston, "Baby" and "My Own Country" with Glenne Headley, Hal Holbrook and Marisa Tomei. Danna also has worked on television series, including "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues" with David Carradine and "Beverly Hills, 90210."

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