Review of Silent Hill: Revelation 3D (2012) by Thequietgamer — 30 Aug 2014

A watchable but all together dumber feeling sequel. The first Silent Hill movie felt like watching one of the games, minus the scares. Because of that it was enjoyed by many SH fans, myself included. This one feels less like SH, and more like some torture-porn horror movie along the lines of one of the later "Saw" movies due to it's grotesque imagery and excessive gore.

The plot, which is based of off the 3rd game, dives deeper into the SH lore from the games, does a good job of adapting and tying the plot of the 3rd game into the plot of the first movie, and is all together much less confusing than many found the first movie to be. Because of this there are plenty of great moments that are throwbacks to the game and some interesting twists on the game's characters. Where the movie stumbles is that it makes the whole thing just feel dumber, cheeper, and cheesier.

There's no fear to be found here and through ways I won't spoil they take Pyramid Head and make him feel like a joke, which is basically a sin in the eyes of any SH fan. Myself included. It also doesn't help that there are tons of lines of awful dialog and our lead actress (Adelaide Clemens) can feel weak at times. Shockingly though the worst performance (possibly the only bad one) comes from Game of Thrones star Taylor Kitsch. He honestly doesn't seem to be trying here. There are also plenty of scenes that just feel dumb and/or unintentionally goofy. It relies too much on dumb theatrics in order to bring scares that have already proven time and time again to not work.

All of these issues drag down "Revelation" from being a great homage to the SH series, and turn it into yet another cheesy video game movie. That's not to say it's not worth watching. What saved the movie for me was my HUGE Silent Hill fandom. It made overall experience watchable and often entertaining for me, even when I was cringing at some stupid thing that happened on-screen that insulted my inner SH fan.

It's the constant references, scenes, and twists on the source material that kept me entertained. It's those same things that will make it at least worth watching for any Silent Hill fan. It's the strength of the games that keep it from being terrible. So anyone not familiar with them should strongly consider passing on this movie. I'll be the first to say that I thought the 3rd game took on a less-scary tone. I saw humor and felt a more self-aware and tongue-in-cheeck tone with that game. That being said this movie's goofy moments don't feel like that, and instead just feel like bad direction.

So my overall opinions on the movie are kind of mixed. I still think any SH fan should check it out, because as I've said before my love of the source material kept me enjoying the movie overall. It does feel like another bad video game movie at times, but it clings close enough to the material of the game it's based on to keep things at the very least watchable for fans. I enjoyed it even though I'm also very disappointed with it. It doesn't live up to the first movie, which IMO might be the best video game movie ever. My overall score is a 6.4/10.