I need to trust my instincts more.
Because, up until I decided to do a little writing about Silent Hill in the run-up to the release of the Silent Hill 2 remake this week, I’ve avoided Revelation. Why would I bother with it, after the dreadful attempt of the first movie? I love a bad film, God only knows, but I’ve got my limits, and eviscerating the corpse of one of the best Silent Hill games in Silent Hill 3 is my limit.
Or, at least, it was, until a few days ago, when I finally got around to watching Silent Hill: Revelation, the 2012 sequel to Silent Hill, directed by MJ Bassett and released for 3D and starring Adelaide Clemens (looking genuinely uncannily like Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine) as Heather.
And friends, it’s bad. Not the kind of bad I can forgive, no – the kind of bad that kind of defies belief. The first movie, at least, feels like a film, but Silent Hill: Revelations, I can only assume, was specifically designed to be a Silent Hill monster reflective of my own worst cinematic nightmares. Let’s get into it!
It’s not just bad because it’s a flub of one of the best games (and some of the most interesting characters) of the whole franchise, though it certainly is that. While there are a few glimpses of love for Silent Hill 3 here – in Heather’s character design, in some of the glimpses of the town, in a few lovingly-recreated moments from the game – it fundamentally has the feel of a sub-par fan project, the sort of thing you might throw together in twenty-five minutes at a comic-con when you find a really convincing Heather cosplayer wandering around artist’s alley. Even when a prop or piece of costuming looks objectively alright, it’s shot in such a way as to decimate its potential, giving sub-par haunted house experience rather than chilling rust realm horror.
There’s obvious passion here, maybe even moreso than there is in the original movie, but the whole thing is draped in an amateurish, cheap feel that’s only dated more by the appallingly obvious moments clearly created for a 3D release. Woah, did you see that knife go through Sean Bean’s spleen and come right at the camera? No? Me neither. How did we get fooled into thinking 3D movies were worthwhile for as long as we did?
And, of course, I have to talk briefly about the other characters adapted from the game, though I use that term as lightly as possible. Carrie Anne Moss appears as Claudia, apparently having severely pissed off someone in hair and make-up before her obvious single day of shooting, if that shake-and-go wig and patchy chalk make-up is anything to go by; Malcolm MacDowell, giving the exact performance that you’d expect him to, plays Leonard Wolf. Sean Bean is back as Harry, and every acting choice is…certainly a choice, I’ll say that, though he’s not terrible.
My biggest issue with the characters that make the jump from game to screen is, predictably, Kit Harrington as Vincent. It’s a bit of a double whammy for me, because I love Vincent in the game – he’s a compelling, entertaining, slippery character, a great foil for Claudia and also quite hot but that’s not relevant at all. So downgrading him to a teen love interest is already bad. But having him played by Kit Harrington…?
If you were looking for a genuinely neutral take on this movie, this is the point where you can divest yourself of that hope once and for all. Because I can’t be neutral about Kit Harrington, man, I just can’t – I think he’s one of the worst actors to ever achieve mainstream success, and to see him here, having not even played the fucking game, stepping in to the hollow boots of one of my favourite characters…it might actually be too much. The performance is almost unfathomably bad, slack-jawed, devoid of presence or emotion or depth, and yes, the writing’s a big part of that, but so is he. I’m not saying this is the thing that pushed me over the edge, but when they go back and look through my increasingly-erratic writings to find the starting point, this will certainly be a significant development.
Not that anyone actually puts in a good performance here, with how dreadful this writing is. I literally had my head in my hands during some scenes, listening to the agonizing teen “banter” between Heather and Vincent, or the jaw-droppingly blatant exposition – God, don’t even get me started on the nonsensical and yet overwritten climax between Heather and Alessa (which is to say, Heather, and Heather in patchy black lipstick). It’s all just so thunderingly, endlessly bad – just when you think it’s hit rock bottom, it pulls out a shovel and starts a-diggin’.
Silent Hill: Revelation is a movie so bad I don’t think any review can truly capture the depths of its awfulness. But I would love to know if any of you can give it a try in the comments – or, if you love this movie, feel free to defend it against my ranting!
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By Lou MacGregor
(header image via Screen Rant)
No But Listen 