Silent Hill: Revelation (2012)

 

Director: M.J. Bassett

Screenplay: M.J. Bassett

Based on the videogame franchise by Konami

Cast: Adelaide Clemens as Heather; Kit Harington as Vincent; Carrie-Anne Moss as Claudia Wolf; Sean Bean as Harry; Radha Mitchell as Rose Da Silva; Malcolm McDowell as Leonard; Martin Donovan as Douglas; Deborah Kara Unger as Dahlia

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #227

 

Silent Hill: Revelation is not a good film. It says a great deal that, with my negative reaction to the original film by French filmmaker Christophe Gans, Revelation manages to convince me that the prequel was a better production. The problem is simply that, adapting Silent Hill 3 (2003) from the videogame franchise, is that you have a film at ninety minutes having desired to elaborate on a complex narrative but never bothers to let the viewer ingest and soak in the world. Everything within this film, whilst cliche, will always been intriguing for a fan of horror storytelling like myself, and there is plenty to work with. Cults, an evil god, a cults, a god, a figure in the lead Heather (Adelaide Clemens) who is in hiding with her father (Sean Bean) and her connection the place of Silent Hill, an abandoned town which descends into an alternative world hellscape when the alarm sounds.

In mind that the original video games are famous for their slow drip feeding horror and psychologically complex content, and a lot of horrifying monsters, there is a film here like so many American horror films of the 2000s onwards (even popular ones) which are like rollercoasters but not for me imaginative ones. Looking at Revelation without the context of the videogames, it runs out of the gates very early into itself. Following from the prequel, Heather is connected to a dark past of Silent Hill, an abandoned town lost to a nightmare based on a former form of herself left there, on her eighteenth birthday drawn back to the environment and a cult there wishing to dispose of her dark other half. It makes very little makes sense beyond this. It does, but it is thrown abruptly onto the wall, and in mind to what the videogame narratives might have had, one would hope they are not this abrupt throughout with their use of their plotting. This crowbars a lot including the other half of Heather, Heather as a character herself, and a large part of the Silent Hill mythos including cults and trying to resurrect gods, but what you get is a lot of exposition and CGI monsters rather than trying to elaborate on this.

Originally commissioned in three dimensions for the theatrical screen, part of the return of 3D as a gimmick in the late 2009s and early 2010s, this does have the presentation of a haunted house experience as, at the moment Heather is in a mall, you get more absurd kooky horror than psychological dread where kids turn into demonic figures eating bloodied offal, and she enters a kitchen where a tied up male victim is having flesh cut off him to cook on the griddle. This is definitely, even as someone who came to the film never playing the Silent Hill games in time sensitive context, not what I came to knowing those video games for, even when they at the time of this film had Western made sequels not well regarded. Even if its original creator Konami have not been as kind or strict to their franchise as you would think, including commissioning a pachinko machine from the series' iconography¹, but the problem in truth is that, even if this is the divisive goofy entry in the franchise, it was never actually an experience to sit through, just a case of a film which hurdles along and leaves no impact, every decision ill advised in presentation even if everything in the plot ideas is not inherently bad.

It is not scary, but the worst thing is how abruptly put together the film is and how predictable it is. The moment the cult subplot is introduced, it is one I have seen in other American films, but that is less of a concern than how it feels ultimately pointless as a plot thread, never interesting and is barely with context in the scheme of things. The sequel follow on from the first film, but it feels an abrupt extension, including a sister from the original antagonist who is barely given screen time and only stands out for her pale skin and lack of eyebrows, ultimately a figure to turn into a Hellraiser film character design abruptly as a final antagonist. Knowing, in video game lore, the character Claudia Wolf is actually important to the original Silent Hill 3 game as an antagonist makes this even worse in how she was handled, even worse for film fans knowing they cast Carrie-Anne Moss, who many know for the Matrix franchise, and barely gave her screen time in this role.

You have a generic male love interest, feeling sorry for actor Kit Harington as for everyone in front and behind the camera, a figure has a secret to him which is obvious. Pyramid Head, the iconic figure from the Silent Hill franchise, is misused again, here a guardian figure who spends most of the film tied to a merry-go-round as its tormented engineer. Malcolm McDowell, the legendary actor once behind Lindsay Anderson films like If... (1968), makes for some fun and a potential H.P. Lovecraft tangent this film could have had as a man deemed insane for having realised there are multiple dimensions, including the Silent Hill hellscape itself. He is only in the film briefly, turning into a monster, and to throw out the term "Metatron" abruptly, thus burying a figure from the real Rabbical Talmud as merely an unseen plot exposition, so this is sadly a brief glimmer of joy.

The truth in Revelation is the opposite problem to the prequel, the first 2006 wanting to tell a story in its slower pace ultimately not that interesting, and Revelation hurdling along without thought to its material being more creative or unique either. Neither haunts the viewer, which is the biggest lasting mark of the original video games whether their writing and technical aspects (like voice acting and graphics) age for every new gamer or fan to the franchise or not. Even the prequel had a haunting nature in briefest of moments where you wandered through an abandoned town full of raining ash and Akira Yamaoka's score from the games standing out.

The one moment which offers something at least lurid and creative, only to be lost, is the one monster in the film clearly designed to stand out. A freakish doll monstrosity with multiple heads, held in hands too, and including the heads of victims turned into mannequins and ripped off the petrified corpses to become part of its form. A weird spider creature, its creation in CGI is unfortunate, but alongside with the one exploitive moment in the film, with an actress cast to do nudity as the victim turned into a mannequin, you have at least something which is weird and perverse even if the CGI and knowledge this creature will never return to the film to be dealt with neuters it. It says a great deal to that, when you research the original Silent Hill 3 videogame, there was even more weight made of what is called "The Memory of Alessa", effectively an evil doppelganger created in the game's complex lore who is talked if here in exposition with weight and ties back to the first film. Within that game, you at least had a boss fight, whilst here osmosis by hugging abruptly resolves that issue quickly. Cast who returns to the film, even in cameo, never have any context for them being here, such as Sean Benn, and baring a weird context of lopping limbs of prisoners in an asylum and a boss scrap, Pyramid Head is a concept without any of its initial context, sapping the horror of a figure who, merely made from polygons, became iconic in the first place for gamers.

The fact the film came to me, and will go, is a tragedy. It is a tragedy, not wishing to bother to talk of it in any elaborate detail, where I feel sympathy for its director-writer M.J. Bassett, or the cast, feeling that it in another time could have been something special but is tragically a work that shot itself in its feet. If we have to talk about this in terms of videogame adaptations, for myself personally the greatest sin with many of them was never accuracy to their source material, as I tended to come to many without the original context, but whether any had energy to them. Super Mario Bros. (1993) is a terrible adaptation of the source material in terms of adaptation, but I openly admit it is a compelling goofy and bizarre creation, turning a platformer into a Blade Runner pastiche with fungus people and Dennis Hopper, whilst Street Fighter (1994), a bad adaptation of the source, is entertaining just for Raul Julia's godlike scenery chewing.  Nothing in either film, even if angering the fanbase, of the Silent Hill films really stood out as memorable in terms of interpreting the source material, and ultimately between them they are a real tragedy in their own ways together with such promising source material.

 

=====

1) Dubbed Silent Hill: Escape, as detailed HERE, Konami can as mistreat their own franchises to their fan bases as anyone else can, so I will not just cruelly dog pile Silent Hill: Revelations for tonal choices only.