Plagued by a series of violent nightmares, Sharon (Adelaide Clemens) struggles to escape the memories of Silent Hill, an alternate reality covered in darkness and ashes. In an attempt to protect their identities from the evil forces of Silent Hill, Sharon uses Heather as an alias, and her father, Christopher (Sean Bean) changes his name to Harry.
After her first day of school, Sharon barley survives attacks from Silent Hill creatures. Sharon receives an ominous warning from a private investigator, and when her father no-shows an important meeting at the mall, Sharon begins to panic. Sharon rushes home, and Vincent (Kit Harrington), a classmate from school, who shows an unusual amount of interest in Sharon, insists on playing the role of a bodyguard.
Once Sharon returns home, her father is gone, and a bloody message is written on the wall: “Come to Silent Hill.” Christopher was the victim of a kidnapping, and Sharon quickly takes possession of a mysterious amulet, that was hidden for protection by her father. With Vincent’s help, Sharon must return to Silent Hill with the amulet to save her father, and stop Alessa (Erin Pitt) and Claudia Wolf (Carrie-Anne Moss), two evil forces with different agendas and motivations.
Director Michael J. Bassett brings a dark and eerie style to Silent Hill: Revelation 3D. Bassett creates the essential desolate and haunting atmosphere, the gory violence is pretty gruesome and brutal, and Bassett provides some incredible 3D effects. The 3D pulled a few awe-inspired reactions out of me, but Revelation is very boring. I struggled to stay awake during this film, because you won‘t see any true jump scares here and Bassett fails to deliver any real tension or suspense.
Overall, the acting is mediocre. Sean Bean had the potential to deliver a high quality performance, but his character doesn’t receive enough screen time here. Adelaide Clemens is a decent leading lady. Carrie-Ann Moss is a dull antagonist, Kit Harrington’s inept performance doesn’t help the Vincent character, and Malcolm McDowell’s (Leonard Wolf) over the top and ridiculous cameo is painful to watch.
Apparently, Revelation is based on Silent Hill 3 the video game. Truth be told, I haven’t been much of a gamer over the years, and I’ve only played one Silent Hill game in the past. It was for the PSP (I can’t remember the title), and this game just bored the ever loving shit out of me. After two weeks of trying, I finally gave up, and traded it in for some store credit at Gamestop.
If I had the knowledge of the game, I might have had a better chance at understanding the story. But I never played the game, so when it comes to the story, I was completely lost throughout this film. Who’s supposed to be the primary antagonist? Claudia Wolf? Alessa? Or is it the big creepy guy with the pyramid shaped head?
Also, at the beginning, Sharon receives a warning from Alessa during a dream sequence: “Don’t come to Silent Hill, you can’t defeat me.” This is paraphrased, because I can’t remember Alessa’s exact warning word for word. Anyway, Sharon is warned by her father and Alessa to stay away from Silent Hill no matter what……and then Sharon goes to Silent Hill. This might sound like a nitpicky complaint, but after receiving three life-or-death warnings (the PI also warns Sharon about Silent Hill), Sharon’s determination to go to Silent Hill becomes another obvious and routine stupid character mistake in horror films.
I didn’t think it was possible. But as far as 2012 video game movies go, Silent Hill: Revelation 3D somehow manages to be worse than Resident Evil: Retribution. The blood craving and violence obsessed horror fan inside of me wants to give this film a positive score, but I can’t. Silent Hill: Revelation 3D is loaded with bloody violence, and I couldn’t understand the logic behind the final battle, but the fight between the pyramid head guy and Claudia Wolf was fun to watch. Still, I can’t ignore the shallow characters and rigid dialogue. Plus, I‘m really not familiar with the Silent Hill video game franchise, so for me, the story was hard to follow, and undecipherable most of the time, especially towards the end. Fans of the video game will probably love this, but when it comes to Silent Hill games, I’m an outsider, and I just saw another shitty mainstream film based on a video game.
Final Rating: 1/10
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