Silent Hill: Revelation

As any fan will tell you, the Silent Hill series contains some of the greatest, and scariest, video games ever made, and the weight of expectation on the movie was enormous. Since the first Silent Hill movie came out in 2006, it’s been generally hailed as the best video game-to-movie adaptation there’s been so far, but is still by-and-large a bad movie. For the sequel, writer/director Michael J. Bassett (Solomon Kane) has decided to skip the Silent Hill 2 videogame (which you’ll be thankful for, as it would require a Cronenberg or Lynch to adapt properly) and adapt Silent Hill 3 for the big screen.

Heather (Adelaide Clemens) and her father Harry (Sean Bean) are actually Sharon and Christopher from the first movie, but have been on the run under new identities for the last six years, constantly trying to stay one step ahead of the cult members from Silent Hill who are trying to capture Heather and bring her back there to complete their prophecy. When Harry is kidnapped, Heather heads to Silent Hill, with the help of Vincent (Game Of Throne’s Kit Harrington), to get him back and finally face the nightmare that has been plaguing her all these years.

The plot is bare-bones – mostly go to this room, talk to this person, get this key to open the next room, fight a boss, repeat if necessary – and the dialogue is dreadful, as everyone seems to speak solely in exposition. Also, the end of the first Silent Hill movie had Heather possessed by an evil demon and all of the cult members killed, and none of these details are brought up here. The acting is almost uniformly terrible, and the movie just isn’t scary, which is a cardinal sin for a horror movie. Dear Movie Directors, stop confusing 'sudden loud noises' with 'horror', as they are not the same thing.

The only positive notes are the same ones that the original movie got right; amazing set designs and a truly creepy soundtrack, both of which were copy-and-pasted from the video games. Lazy, dull and at times so-bad-it’s-funny; when one of the big baddies gets destroyed by a hug, you’ll know something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.