Review of Silent Hill: Revelation 3D (2012) by Evillive — 26 Oct 2012

Okay, I'm going to be up front here and tell anyone who is reading this that I am a Silent Hill fan. I love the games and Silent Hill 2 is among my favorite games of all time. I will not be comparing this to the games because we all know that the games are better. So when I unleash all holy hell upon this movie, I want to make it clear that I am not being (or at least not attempting to be) a but hurt fanboy.

For those of you who walked the first movie, you probably remember the artsy ending and how it left no room for a sequel. Watching the writer's solution to that problem is unbearably bad and made even worse by both Sean Bean's and Mitchell Radha's lack of giving a **** (not that I can blame them). using the seal of Metatron as a means of getting out of Silent Hill is what we call Deus Ex Machina. It is the most half-assed explanation they could have ever wrote. Not to mention the damn thing has no logic behind it. It allows the user to see the true nature of things, but that doesn't explain how they get out of what is essentially Hell. Was this whole thing just a delusion? We don't know because the movie never explains to us, nor does it attempt to create a consistent logic within the world they've created.

There are so many pointless characters in this movie. From the girl that Heather randomly meets in the mannequin room, give a brief back story and then get taken away and killed off camera. If you're going to have a pointless character in a horror movie then at least kill them off in a creative way. All she did was scream with Heather and then died. Why was she in this movie in the first place? And how did she end up in the same dimension as the cultists when she just made a wrong turn? Shouldn't she be in the actual town of Silent Hill and not the the crazy evil version of Silent Hill? And Douglas has the same effect, except he's given a name and a reason for being in the movie, except he has no reason to be there because they have Vincent doing the exact same thing. Then there is Dahlia's brief exposition dump because the movie is too busy showing us the "creepy" sets to care about telling the story.

Then there is the plot, which is all over the map. First off, why would the police be looking for Heather and Harry/Christopher the cult member was killed in self defense. Couldn't they just as easily tell the police, there are some crazy cultists trying to kill me and my daughter? Why does Heather run from the cops when she sees a message in blood, instead of tell them the truth? Why is the plot point of the cops looking for Heather suddenly dropped? Why is Vincent suddenly in love with Heather after knowing her for less than a day? Why does Harry/Christopher care more about his wife than his daughter (seriously he gets a little obsessive)? How is Pyramid Head in the Asylum, when he is later established to be chained up in the amusement park? Why does the amusement park look more like a carnival? Why are the cult members who take Vincent to the Asylum killed by the nurses? Shouldn't they know that sound attracts them? How did Leonard turn into that monster by just fusing the Seal of Metatron, and how does removing it instantly kill him? How is Claudia turned into a monster? Was she always a monster? If so, then what does that make Vincent? How did Pyramid Head break free from his chains, and why didn't he do that before? And if he did that to help Heather in the Asylum, then why did he come back and chain himself back up? Those are just off the top of my head, and I assure you, there are plenty more.

The characters have no character to them. Claudia is a one note villain who is hardly in the movie. The movie seems to think that the town itself and the monsters in them are a substantial enough villain to hold the entire movie. Vincent has no purpose except as a romantic interest, but he and Heather have no chemistry. Heather flat out rejects him up to the point where she saves is life. But after he kisses her, I guess they're together now (gag). Leonard and Dahlia are there solely for exposition spouting. Oh, wait. Leonard is also there to remove the gun from the equation for the final act (because then she could just shoot the nurses, or Claudia if she conserved her ammo). Harry/Christopher was generic and Sean Bean's performance was terrible (in fact, terrible acting is something I could say about the entire cast). And Heather was wasted potential. Here we have a seventeen year old girl, constantly moving around from town to town in order to avoid something she doesn't understand. Then one day all of that gets brought to her attention and she begins to uncover the truth, eventually confronting her former self. But the writer doesn't do anything with it. It's like being handed the Mona Lisa, then putting it in your closet.

And the movie isn't scary to boot (shocker).

Thank you for reading this rant.