Its been six years since the first Silent Hill hit our screens, so you could say its been quite a while for the second to arrive. The first one was itself rather decent in my opinion, it was far from a perfect film and at times rather boring. However it managed to translate the atmosphere of the games onto screen rather successfully.
Going into seeing this film I had very low expectations, the reviews it has received from the mainstream media have been diabolical. But to my surprise it was actually better than I expected and at times enjoyable. That said the film is still no better than mediocre, but with a little more attention the film had the potential to be better.
Revelations follows on from the first film in that Harry (Sean Bean) returns from the first film, his daughter Heather (Adelaide Clemens) the films lead continuously move from house to house to house. The film starts on her first day at a new school where she meets up with another new student Vincent (Kit Harrington). Its on her first day of school that she realises that she is being watched by Private detective Douglas Cartland.
But the film really kicks off when she arrives home to find her father has disappeared and written on the walls are the words 'Come to Silent Hill'.
The surprisingly good thing about this film is that its a rare video game adaptation that is actually quite true to its source material, many of the locations will make fans of the series nostalgic. That aside everything in the film seems to just plod along, the narrative seems to have no purpose and things just seem to happen for no plausible reason. Locations are visited and then left far too quickly. One scene involving a spider creature made up of mannequins is one example, what could have been a very scary scene ends far too quickly.
The dialogue at times is worst than that of a B movie and cringe worthy, the 3D is good (the falling ash is particularly impressive) but very very sparse and hardly worth the extra money to pay for the ticket. Carrie Anne Moss gets no more than five minutes of screen time in her role as Claudia Wolf. And those who have not seen the first film will struggle to make any sense of this one.
However Adelaide Clemens is impressive as Heather, and she surely has a good career in front of her. But that aside the film will split opinion of fans of the video games, the ending will certainly leave others a little aghast. But its the plot of the film which is its Achilles, implausible narratives are never explained thoroughly enough to care.
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