The pReview Re-viewing of..
Silent Hill: Revelation
CLICK THE TITLE TO VIEW THE TRAILER IN A SEPARATE WINDOW
(it is highly recommended to view the trailer and THEN read!)
(warning: Contains most of the plot of Silent Hill 3.. With just a dash of Winter's Bone.. And a hint of Pee Wee's Big Adventure.)
by Jeff Finck
written: 9/11/2012
Release Date: October 26, 2012
The premise: We're all familiar with the plot of Silent Hill, right? I mean, there's not too much to it: First a smallish to large area of land is formed through a number of geomorphic phenomena with rounded peaks that result from the diffusive movement of soil and regolith covering the hill, a process known as downhill creep. And then, you know.. This one isn't loud. The first Silent Hill movie was loosely based on the elaborately crafted trans-dimensional romp of the same name, where Rose da Silva (Radha Mitchell) and her adopted daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) are pulled into the sleepy little hell mouth of a town called Silent Hill (They said the name of the movie AND the game!!!!). Upon arriving, Rose just immediately loses track of Sharon and goes on a totally screwed up adventure full of revelations about her adopted daughter's past that makes Labyrinth seem like a Dora the Explorer episode.
The whole time Rose and Sharon are running around Bizarro Silent Hill, Rose's husband Chris (Sean Bean) is in normie Silent Hill trying to track her down. The movie kind of leaves us with an ambiguous "Are they alive?" kind of ending as mother and child arrive safely at home in a foggy world of mystery, parallel with the one that Sean Bean lords over with his completely living, totally alive body.. For now.
Well, this here new one starts off with Chris and Sharon da Silva.. I mean Harry and Heather Mason (Heather is played by Adelaide Clemens).. Without Rose.. On the run for the last six years or so. The two of them changed their names and probably ditched Rose for being such a horrible mother for bringing her child, literally, into Hell. Well, Silent Hill rears its disfigured head and wraps its sticky tentacles firmly around the da Silva/Mason family once more and drags the whole family kicking and screaming.. Mostly screaming.. Back into the mystery once again. But this time, it is Sharon.. I mean Heather that is looking for a lost family member in this monument of cautionary tales against joining a cult. Oh, and she's up against two whack jobs, Claudia and Leonard Wolf, played by Trinity and Caligula (respectively).
Now that the back story is done, the trailer drops us right into the town that Hell calls home. (Their words, not mine.. I'd say it's more like a town where that one demon and a truckload of crazy people call home) Sharon.. Dammit. I mean, Heather is having nightmares again. This time, she's having visions of sugarplums dancing through blood and fire, all the while, Alessa (the demon from the first movie) traipses down the streets of Silent Hill like she's leading a psychotic, Main Street Electrical Parade black tornado of vengeance and evil.
After Heather wakes up from her nightmare in a panic, Chris.. Damn, I mean Harry.. consoles his daughter. He tells her that she's just having a dream and that she should probably just ignore this particular problem until it swims up and bites her in the ass. She then alerts him that Silent Hill is calling her.
Heather can't dwell on her nightmares, though. She has a big day ahead of her: FIRST DAY AT A NEW SCHOOL! I know, right? That exciting time in everyone's life where you get to meet new people, new teachers.. And are forced to stand in front of every class and say some inane thing about yourself while the rest of the students silently (and sometimes, not so silently) judge you and determine their opinion of you for the rest of your scholarly career. I like to tell people that I was the baby from Ghostbusters 2.. Foolproof. Heather, however, decides to pour her entire life story out to these teenaged assholes, and claims that this is her fifth school since she was eleven! This, of course, will lead the other childrens to believe that she's either a military brat, or she's on the run from extra-dimensional demon cultists that tried to sacrifice her in a fire ritual six years ago.
You can just never tell what kids are thinking nowadays. After class, Heather has a full on psychotic break and Vincent (Kit Harrington) is the only one who sees her do it. I assume Vincent wants to sleep with her really, really bad.. He's a high school boy.. So he's probably going to just believe everything she says. Meeting boys and having them try to sleep with you is the least of your worries when you're an attractive young girl named Heather Mason, though. She also has to worry about Douglas Cartland (Martin Donovan), a man who may or may not be stalking her. Paranoid that they've been found by the malevolent forces of darkness that have been chasing them.. Wait.. Having been found by the malevolent forces of darkness that have been chasing them, Harry is ambushed at home and brutally kidnapped. After school.. Like, hours after school.. Vincent walks Heather home to discover that her father is missing and a message on the wall reading, "Come to Silent Hill".. With a weird symbol that kind of looks like a bowling ball on a pizza platter.
Heather claims she knows the bowling ball/pizza platter symbol and her and Vincent do some snooping. And because snooping NEVER leads to bad things happening, they snoop.. Oh wait, bad things totally happen and Vincent gets taken, too. Heather has a very particular set of skills.. Skills that make her useless in a situation like this, but she's going to give it a shot anyway, and heads off to foggy London town.. I mean, foggy Murder town. She actually meets up with Dahlia Gillespie (Deborah Kara Unger), mother of Allessa the Demon, as well as.. I guess, Heather.. Who is really Sharon.. And is the reincarnation of Allessa's innocence. My head hurts. Regardless, Dahlia is still roaming the streets of Silent Hill rambling on about darkness and signs and safety and stuff. But then the sirens kick in. And if you've ever played Silent Hill, or have any common sense, whatsoever, you know that sirens are never good. The world starts falling up and Heather flees for her life, because if gravity isn't working on the walls and inanimate objects, what hope does a 98 pound girl have?!
Well, Dahlia is a damn liar. Heather makes it inside, but then is confronted almost immediately by whatever the fuck this is:
Through her meddling, Heather figures out that she's actually in possession of a medallion that happens to be a key. She learns from Leonard Wolf (Malcolm McDowell) that it unlocks the "true nature of things".. Or whatever that means. The rest of the trailer is spent with Heather unlocking stuff, I suppose, because Dahlia finally reveals that Heather was chosen to destroy the demon that she narrowly avoided releasing years ago, allegedly. She also finds one whacky carnival full of fanatical lost souls, her stolen father, and one of the worst healthcare systems ever invented. (See the nurse picture above.. Sanitation is not their bag, baby.) Oh, and the end of the trailer is peppered with Pyramid Head doing rhythmic gymnastics with his massive sword.
Now, I know the first movie wasn't loved by everyone. In fact, the critics bashed the living tits out of it. But the amount of fucks I give about most critic thoughts I can count on less than one middle finger. (There's an irony here, somewhere..) I loved the first movie. They changed just enough from the games to keep me interested in what was going on, and they had enough of a budget to keep the movie worth looking at in every single scene. Revelation seems to be taking a trip back to the video games and hopefully explaining that ambiguous ending that left everyone confused as balls. One of the main complaints about Silent Hill was the dialogue.. And rightfully so. The script for the first one might as well have been written by the team who translated the original Resident Evil video game. Well, there's a new writer and new director this go-round (They're actually the same guy: Michael J. Bassett, the genius behind Wilderness (2006) and Solomon Kane), so I assume that this will be way slicker and maybe even a little more suspenseful than the first. All I know is that I have my Halloween movie this year and I can't wait!