Silent Hill: Revelation Review

Let me just start by saying that while I am a huge fan of the Silent Hill series, I understand that there is always room for adaptation and changes that could potentially make a movie version easier to understand or more fun to watch. Silent Hill: Revelation has none of these though. As a horror movie that's an adaptation of a horror game, it fails even on the most fundamental level of being scary. You can see everything before it happens and it doesn't even try all that often. 

Silent Hill: Revelation takes places roughly ten years after the first movie. After coming up with some nonsensical explanation for how Sharon (now Heather, played by Adelaide Clemens) escaped from the Otherworld in the first movie, the plot centers around her father's (Sean Bean) efforts to protect her from the crazy cultists of Silent Hill. The plot of the film isn't terrible. The actual idea is sound and makes sense even if you haven't played the games. The issues come from nearly everything else. The dialogue is awful, the acting is even worse, and certain events that take place within the film quite literally have no other purpose than to explain things to you.

Our lead, Adelaide Clemens does a serviceable job as Heather, easily portraying the stress and horror of the things going on around her. Problems quickly arise when she tries to act "tough". Her acting devolves and her dialogue becomes insane one-liners that would have fit better in an 80's action film.

Kit Harrington, God bless him, is probably wondering why his agent gave him this film. Looking at the role he plays, I don't understand what made him want to do this movie. He stars as Vincent, who shares only the name with his video game counterpart. A fascinating character in the game, here Vincent has been reduced to a teenager who fills every cliche in the book. Harrington's acting is -  like his leading lady - serviceable at best and cringe inducing at worst. Harrington falls a bit shorter though because for some reason he isn't able to keep his accent in check as he speaks, so the longer his lines, the less American he sounds. 

These two are the only characters you'll see for ninety percent of the movie, but the movie is filled with other actors with screen time long enough to qualify for a glorified cameo. Sean Bean is probably the best in the bunch, but I fear that if he had any more screen time he would have fallen to the awful dialogue. Other actors such as Malcolm McDowell as Leonard Wolf and Carrie-Anne Moss as Claudia Wolf give some of the worst performances of their lives. Whether they can be blamed though is hard to say as they have the worst of the dialogue. Their appearances are more of a waste of space as they only service to move the plot forward, before being cast aside permanently. The same goes for Martin Donovan, who plays the private detective Douglas. For a character who lasts throughout the entire game, Douglas serves only to explain things to the audience before he his disposed of and never seen again. Choices like this plague the entire movie. 

Despite being a chore to watch, the film suffers from being too short. If perhaps some of these characters were given more time (namely Claudia, who as the villain of the movie has about five minutes of screen time), their parts wouldn't feel so worthless. It all culminates in an ending worthy of the worst fanfiction you've ever read. 

It's not all bad though. The set design is as amazing, if not better than it was in the first film. Everything looks completely life-like, even if the monsters aren't really up to snuff. The music, a blend between remixes from the games and some original stuff, is amazing. There's even a new song from Mary Elizabeth McGlynn in the end credits. The film also has a lot of random references to the other games that fans may enjoy. Unfortunately they're so randomly placed (some even out of chronological order) that they may drive fans up the wall instead of pleasing them.

I will also briefly mention that I did wind up seeing the film in 3D and aside from a few cliched 3D moments (fingers flying at the screen for instance), it's actually very well done. The 3D add some great depth to the the outdoor scenes with the ash snowing around the town and other scenes such as the carousel fire. 

All in all, my experience with in the movie can be summed by a friend's remark to someone who was interested in seeing the film: "If you were planning on seeing the new Silent Hill movie, might I suggest stabbing your eyes out. It will be both scarier and more enjoyable."

Yep.