DVD Review: Silent Hill Revelation Colin D Miller March 28, 2013 DVDs & Rentals, Editor's Choice 3041 While not the finest of horror films, Christophe Gans Silent Hill (2006) is arguably one of the better cinematic adaptations of a video game out there. Silent Hill RevelationAside from a ropey third act, it paid homage to the iconic game series and treated the property in a fairly respectable manner. Using the music and core visual cues from the game – with all these winks and nods aimed at fans, at the same time it could also be enjoyed by newcomers. Essentially Silent Hill wasn’t condescending, unlike so many video game adaptations that came beforehand. Something of a rarity even, a film inspired by a video game, done right. Silent Hill Revelations undoes a lot of that hard work and sadly as video game adaptations go, here we have another mess of a film, lacking depth, decent performances and ultimately a cohesive script. To say it’s a disappointing experience is something of an understatement. Following on some several years after the original, Heather Mason (Adelaide Clemens) and her adoptive father Christopher (Sean Bean) have spent the time since the first film moving from town to town, trying to avoid anything related with Silent Hill. The lack of a decent script is the biggest problem. The first 20 minutes of the film are spent explaining why the events of the previous film don’t tie up with the premise of this film, so it takes a little while for things to kick in. It also takes 5 minutes to explain why Radha Mitchell is not in the series, in one of the most shoe-horned scenes ever committed to cinema. The plot is completely nonsensical and the forced performances from the likes of Malcolm McDowell (in drag) and Carrie Anne Moss are just painfully bad. Sean Bean’s accent jumps in and out of different continents and unlike the 2006 effort, all tension and atmosphere is jettisoned in favour of macabre scenes showing people being tortured, having their arms sliced off or turning into mannequins. If there is one thing to be said in favour of the film, several of the creatures do look pretty cool and show some degree of imagination from the design department. However, by the time you’ve seen the final act you’ll probably think the filmmakers have even gone too far with this. Clearly the filmmakers were more concerned with making the 3D visuals work than crafting something with a plot that makes any sense. Even when watching the film in 2D you can tell this, as so many shots are presented from angles that scream “doesn’t this look cool, its like it is jumping out at you!” For the 99% of us that own 2D televisions, this is a wasted effort and just had a jarring effect on the overall experience. In fact I’ll speak frankly here, I just wish this 3D fad would die on its arse now – because if films like Silent Hill Revelation are the future, then I’m done with modern cinema.
