Silent Hill: Revelation (2012)

I'll first of all point out that I am quite the Silent Hill fan before explaining that this director did not get the point of Silent Hill.

The games and indeed some aspects of the last film provoked fear through the unknown, the fact that the characters were totally lost and on their own in a place where anything could happen. The creatures were scary and the less we knew about them, the scarier they were. In the last film the acting was great and there was plenty of suspense, and a decent director and art team running the project.

This one had some great visuals, the environments were great to look at. The CGI effects however, were not. Neither was the poor use of the actors talent, and the over use of extra human characters and monsters. These combined with a terrible attempt to almost follow the 3rd game TOO closely whilst remaining loyal to the first film, makes for a bad experience. It's nice to see that the director here tried to make a nice little tie in with both the games and the film, but the last film wandered into it's own little story, which luckily turned out well. he should have stuck to following the games, or the last film instead of both. Then he needed to write up some less cliché' lines for the actors.

Fmovies: No Story No Style No Atmosphere No Suspense Awful Effects Edited with a hatchet by the looks of it Directed and written ( ? ) by someones with no talent who should go work in Walmart The first Silent Hill was made by someone with talent and imagination ... It created a unique and visually stylish world This thing lacks all of that ... In fact it lacks most things needed to make something a film This looks like some random scenes thrown together by the syfy channel as a trailer for some film that someone else should have made Absolutely atrocious ... I want the 90 minutes of my life back that I wasted watching this nonevent Burn Hollywood ... Burn

I went into Silent Hill Revelation with high expectations. I liked the original film for its having successfully captured the feel of the original games, even if it wasn't terribly accurate to the actual plot of the game. I wasn't too happy that they skipped adapting Silent Hill 2, but I'll take what I can get for SH adaptations. Although I felt I got my money's worth, I wasn't as mesmerized by the film as I thought I would.

Revelation's story is a mixed bag. The film is a bizarre hybrid of both the first movie's and the game's canon, but it does a good job of tying the various threads together into a coherent plot. If you liked the original film's straight-forward take on the cult of Silent Hill and Alessa, you'll like this one. It may be missing a lot of the subtlety, but the core story is still enjoyable. However, a large amount of the dialogue is really awkward and sometimes even wince-inducing. Tidying up the dialogue and making it feel more natural would have made a noticeable difference in the final film. Overall, the story and dialogue were better in the original movie.

If you're looking for a straight adaptation of Silent Hill 3, look elsewhere. Characters have their personality and role shifted, plot twists are removed and added, and there are a whole lot of "Wait, that never happened in the game!" moments. I would describe this film as being "inspired" by the original game, as it really only covers the most important details of the original plot. However, there are a lot of clever references to the original game and to entries throughout the series that will doubtlessly please the Silent Hill addict.

Silent Hill Revelations carries over a flaw from the original in that it is absolutely obsessed with the black magic and demonic side of Silent Hill and downplays the psychological and surreal elements of the original games. The dream-like feeling that the original games inspired in players is mostly gone, even more-so than the first. However, this does in some ways create a more exciting film and lends itself well to some visceral chase sequences and graphic fights with the monsters of everyone's favorite hell-hole.

However, many of these changes are understandable. The original game thrived on atmosphere and bombarded the player with cryptic notes and bizarre occurrences as they solved puzzles and fought monsters. Film is a very different medium from video-games, so logically a lot of things had to be changed to create a story that would fit the pacing of a film. As a result, I don't have too many hard feelings about the changes made to the story.

The acting side of things is fairly positive. Adelaide Clemens does a fantastic job as Heather. She looks exactly like Heather did in the game and delivers a performance that makes Heather into a much more likable character. Sean Bean gives a decent but underutilized performance as Harry. Kit Harington is by far the weakest link in the cast in his awkward portrayal of a high-school aged Vincent. The rest of the cast give decent, if not extraordinary performances.

Visually, the film is better than you'd expect. They slashed the budget to less than half of the original's, but the film still looks pretty good. Monster costuming is phenomenal just like the first. The cinematography is fairly good and does a good job of drawing you into the film, even if the first film was better in this regard. The more large-scale visual effects and a few of the monsters

Silent Hill: Revelation fmovies. Now I'm okay with movies that didn't follow exactly like the original plot from games, books, etc like the first Silent Hill movie, I think it is still fine. But this one is just BAD. I'm not sure what I was watching but I didn't feel like I was watching a full movie. It just lack of many things. Maybe it's too short, maybe Silent Hill 3 is just not suitable to be made into a movie because the story is all about Heather trying to find the truth about herself, and since we already knew that at the beginning, what is there to tell anymore? And we as an audience already knew how her father is doing, only Heather didn't know, again there's nothing to look forward too. We just merely watching Heather going from point A to B and nothing else. It is that dull and plain.

And the horror? the movie is trying too hard to be creepy. What's with all the pointless close up of meat cutting and bloody mouthful eating. I don't know it just didn't work for me.

I went into Silent Hill: Revelation hoping to be proved wrong. Sure, I knew the move was going to be a bit gimmicky (being shot in 3D and all), and the trailers hadn't looked too promising, but as a fan of the Silent Hill series, I thought that maybe I'd still enjoy the film. Unfortunately, this movie is riddled with so many flaws and defects that it completely falls flat.

The movie is based on the third silent hill game, following Heather Mason as she tries to learn more about her past but more importantly just survive as a series of nightmarish events draw to Silent Hill. The movie tries to follow the plot of the game, but deviates frequently in ways that make little sense. The game's plot was already somewhat muddled and disjointed, and its translation into a screenplay has only made the plot more nonsensical and difficult to follow. Events seem to occur at random, characters are left underdeveloped, and there is no logical progression to the story. The film flounders around for a bit before leaving viewers with an unsatisfactory climax which tapers off with an awkward closing scene.

The acting is pretty poor, and the screenplay isn't much better. Dialogue is stilted and awkward. Carrie-Anne Moss and Kit Harington in particularly do a very poor job of delivering their lines, and are completely unconvincing. To be fair, Sean Bean and Adelaide Clemens do a half-way decent job considering the lines they are given. But overall the acting and writing are both beneath what you would expect from your run-of-the-mill horror flick.

The special effects are pretty well done, and the 3D does make for some interesting moments. Silent Hill's iconic falling ash and dense fog in particular benefit from this treatment. Most of the time though, the 3D is just used to amplify the movies considerable gore. While the special effects are pretty solid, they just don't make up for the poor plot and dialogue which really are sub-par, even by horror movie standards.

I really wanted to like this movie, but even as a fan of the material I found myself unable to appreciate it. My advice is to save your money and rent it when it comes out on DVD.

I absolutely love the first Silent Hill film. The flashbacks (reminiscent of how one learns the back-story in a video game) were chilling and unveiled a haunting past for little Rose/Alessa. So I went into the sequel with anticipation and an open mind, but honestly...the best part of this movie was the opening credits, which did look pretty awesome in 3D. Everything after that was just boring as heck.

The storyline just seemed to move at a snail's pace. Plus the movie relied more on startle tactics instead of horror and gross out factor like the first. The new monsters did a lot of screaming and little else. The older ones we've previously seen were treated like domesticated livestock. And all I got of my favorite character (Rose) was a 10 second exchange with another character and dialog straight out of a 1.99 Harlequin Romance novel. Ugh! I actually had to wake myself up in the middle of this film. The only other time I've fallen asleep was back in the 90's with Blue Chips. It'd be a toss up as to which I'd be willing to sit through again. Oh, and the gal was NOT as good or creepy as the original Alessa/Sharon kid. Could they not afford to hire that one back again or something?

And I really think it was the wrong move to go with a film so dedicated to the video game. Tossing out things like magical totems and demon gods...it just didn't translate to film well. The first one made sense without having to have played the game. The plot for this one seemed too B-movie, especially if you weren't a player.