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Title: Silent Hill: Revelation
Release Date: October 26, 2012
Driector: Michael J Bassett
Run Time: 94 Minutes
Quick Hits: Set several years after the original Silent Hill (2006), we find that Sharron (now known as Heather) escaped the clutches of Silent Hill and is living with her father. She is forced to face the terrors of Silent Hill once more to try and save her father from The Order whom only want to be freed from the clutches of Alessa.
Review: Set on the eve of Heather's (aka Sharron) eighteenth birthday, we open in a nightmarish carnival setting in which she is being chased by men in gas masks and many other creepy things that we would expect from the realm of Silent Hill (which I will be referring to from here on out by SH). Lo and behold that is exactly what this is as Heather wakes from her dream being comforted by her father, Harry, who is then attacked by another SH monster in the same way that Freddy, Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, would do using a dream within a dream scenario; Heather actually wakes up this time and everything seems to be fine. It is revealed to us that Heather and her father have been on the run because Harry had killed a man in "self-defense." While at school Heather "falls" back into the SH "reality" without actually returning to SH, as she starts to see the walls rust away along with seeing young children in classrooms teasing a single girl saying "burn the witch," along with another monster coming towards her. She snaps out of it as a fellow student, Vince, bumps into her. Feeling as though she is being followed, Heather calls her father to come meet her at the mall; as he attempts to leave the house he is attacked and kidnapped by an unknown group. Aided by Vince, Heather travels back to SH to try and save her father. While in SH Heather learns of her origins, being the good portion of Alessa, and the scheme that The Order has developed to free themselves from the hell that they are in. In the end she thwarts their plan by joining back with Alessa and a little help from everybody's favorite SH monster, Pyramid Head, dispelling the fog that had consumed SH. The movie closes with Heather and Vince catching a ride with a trucker away from SH as a police convoy transporting prisoners drives into town as the fog and ash begin to rain down once again.
If you like the SH game franchise and have seen the first movie then you pretty much know the main players and the back story leading up to this point. As a sequel to the first movie this one kind of falls on its face. The way that Rose, Heather's adoptive mother, is able to get Heather out of SH (if you haven't seen the first movie they are stuck there at the end and not able to leave, sorry for the spoiler) is kind of a cop-out in my opinion and is feels like it was thrown into the script just to clear up confusion haphazardly; "I just happened to find a talisman that can only get one of us out of here so I gave it to her," come on now that is kind of weak. Speaking of weak, that pretty much sums up the whole of the story for me. At no point are we really given anything new to pull our attention and say "wow" to like in the first SH movie. Other than the weak story I can say that the transitions that were used to move from reality to "SH reality" were very well done, they weren't forced and were very subtle. Whether it was just walking through a doorway or using a cutaway so that a seemingly normal person could be SH-ified. However this is the only uplifting point of the film that I can point out. The movie was made during the "re-introduction," if you will, of 3-D movies during the summer/fall season of 2012 and thus is has several 3-D shots that I feel distract and detract from the movie. I am sure that the effect looks good in 3-D, but in 2-D they just look god awful. If you want closure on the story of Silent Hill I would suggest watching it, other than that I would can only give you the advice that Harry gave to Heather at the beginning of the movie: "I want you to promise me, no matter what happens, you will never go there."
Overall Rating: 1/5