by Craig Thomas
It all started with The Super Mario Brothers. By which, I mean the idea that you could take a massively successful computer game and turn it into a movie, which would have a pre-established fan-base. Which is all well and good except for one thing. It was rubbish. Like Waterworld rubbish, apparently. I say “apparently” because having seen Waterworld recently the idea that anything could approach such levels of stupidity just seems incredibly unlikely. Plus, as a child I saw the Super Mario Brothers movie numerous times and thoroughly enjoyed it. But kids are stupid, so they can’t be trusted. Not even your younger self. Especially not your younger self. He was an idiot. At least, mine was.
Anyway, that was the film that kicked off the trend of movies based on computer games being rubbish and since then, not a lot has changed. The only major difference being that nowadays when one of these terrible movies is made, it is openly ridiculed for being terrible. Then it goes onto make millions of dollars. Then there is a sequel. Which is again ridiculed. Which then goes on to make millions more dollars. In the case of the god awful Resident Evil series, they are currently up to number five. All of which are unreservedly terrible. And horrendously successful, financially speaking.
And so it is with Silent Hill, which as a game is pretty damn good, or so I’m told. But they made a film and it wasn’t really any good, but it made a lot of money, so they made Silent Hill: Revelation.
It is set about seven years after the first trip to Silent Hill, and Sharon (now named Heather and played by Adelaide Clemens) is 18 years old, only she can’t remember anything of the first movie. Her mother, Rose, (played by Radha Mitchell), is missing, and for some reason (most likely, financial), Sean Penn resumes his role as her father, Christopher.
This is all explained at the start of the movie. Then a bunch of not very important stuff happens and she finds herself once again in Silent Hill.
What then happens is familiar to anyone who has seen the first one. There are the same deformed armless zombie things, and the same weirdly sexy, slutty nurse zombies and the same distinctly non-sexy sword-wielding giant with a over-sized cheese grater on his head. It might actually be his head, I’m not sure.
Anyway, as well as this there is also the introduction of a new bad guy (read: woman), who is the same as the old bad guy (woman). Then, there is probably the most unforgettably terrible demon creature of all time. If I said it was a zombie spider mannequin composed of mostly arms holding dummy heads it would sound about as frightening as it is (ie: not at all). It might even make you sigh with exasperation, but what it won’t do, and what is shouldn’t do, is make you laugh. Horror is the antithesis of comedy, in that if everyone laughs then you’ve not done your job properly. It was truly pathetic and the graphics of the “scary” screaming mannequin face looked like something out of a spoof.
But that was somewhat indicative of the whole film, it just wasn’t scary, or creepy or anything like that. For all the flaws of the first film, at least it did generate a sense of unease when essentially helpless characters are being chased by the relentless forces of evil. Sure, it wasn’t as intense as The Terminator, but at least it was something. That is missing from this film, not least of all due to the apparent uselessness of the evil characters this time around.
It seemed to me that one of the key problems of the film was that, like its predecessor, it was intended to be about two hours long. Instead, what we get in a film that clocks in at just under 90 minutes. This in itself is not a bad thing. The original certainly dragged in places and felt overly long. However, this one feels like test audiences said it felt too long so they just cut a bunch of stuff out. The issue then is one of pace. A lot of the scenes feel as if they were intended to be slow, drawn-out affairs which have been simply cut short, without any sort of reworking. Ideas then feel under-developed, which is particularly irritating as there are a lot of events in the film, none of which are given an opportunity to build to any sort of dramatic tension. This is a perfect example of a poorly paced film, or more precisely, of a decently paced film, poorly edited.
If you’re looking for a good horror film, this isn’t it. If you’re looking for that first good movie derived from a computer game, you’re out of luck again. It isn’t terrible, but it doesn’t fix the flaws of the overly-long original and in fact, makes matters worse with its brevity. But the acting is fine, so is the dialogue, though the plot could certainly have done with a few more revisions. Anyone who green-lights a film where the penultimate battle is a hug-to-the-death between two teenage girls on a horsey carousel deserves to be fired. But they won’t be. In fact, they’ll probably get a nice juicy bonus.
For all the problems of this film, of which there are many, it is still a better film than any of the Resident Evil monstrosities. And if that’s not damning with faint praise, then I don’t know what is.
Hopefully the lessons will be learnt and all the problems will be fixed for the third installment in the franchise. And there will be a third installment. Or at least, that’s what the ending promised. But then again, so did Super Mario Brothers.
Grade: D