Silent Hill: Revelation 3D (2012) Review

Yell! Magazine’s Silent Hill: Revelation 3D review:

I could be wrong, but I think I saw Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, last night – but it’s very difficult to be sure. See, if I try real hard, I can dredge up some imagery from the leaky faucet that sits in my headbone, but I have no way of knowing whether or not I actually saw the movie. I’m pretty sure that I must’ve seen something, but I don’t really remember any sort of tangible plot, or any kind of acting on the part of the cast – just a bunch of wood.

There’s a solid chance that I’ve seen this movie, but then again, I feel like I was probably just raped viciously at a small-town carnival.

Yeah – yeah, I was probably just raped viciously.

NO WAIT- yes… Yes- I did see Silent Hill: Revelation 3D! I did, because I remember scrubbing myself with steel wool when I got home! I doused myself in drain cleaner and just went to town on the first three layers of my skin to rid myself of the after effects of that monstrous POS.

Heather Masons (Adelaide Clemens) and her father, Harry (Sean Bean), have returned from the ash-covered town of Silent Hill, and have spent the last few years hopping from town to town, for reasons initially unknown. Heather, now almost 18 years old, comes to realize that she may not be the person she thinks she is, once she starts “hallucinating” herself into a rusted, decaying world, populated by men with no faces.

Sounds like my kind of place.

Right, right. It’s all coming back to me, now. Those cross-overs to Silent Hill – the hallucinations – occur so early on in the movie and with such frequency that they’re outright laughable – a quality that’s very pervasive throughout the film.

I seem to recall a series of set-pieces, wherein Heather walks from one scene to the other, in order to find her father. Yes – yes, and on her journey, she runs into a series of ghastly-ass ghouls that present as much of a threat as a light gust of wind. Somewhere along the way, I’d have heaps of exposition just kind of dumped into my lap all at once, and I’d wrench myself away from the action to try to make sense of the whole thing.

By grandpa’s slacks, it all makes sense.

Yes, the reason that Silent Hill: Revelation 3D was so forgettable is because it’s a 90-minute expanse wherein nothing happens. Our hero meanders from set to set, dodging large knives and eventually fumbles her way through a climax that could run for dumbest cinematic peak of the year. Lastly, two badly made up demons duke it out in a tensionless final battle, as the protagonists look on and wonder what they’re still doing in the scene.

And in a world where everything wants to eat you, Heather dispatches her foes with relative ease:

“Oh, a split-head zombie in a pair of Levi’s? Boom – headshot.”

“Ah, a lumbering giant made up of what looks like string cheese? I’ll just reach into your torso and steal your magical, video-game-like source of life.”

“Oh? A room full of busty, faceless nurses that’ll totally stab my shit if I make a sound? I’ll just loudly make my way through this scene, ‘cause I’m the main character, and I won’t die.”

Somewhere along the way, as you come to realize that this movie is a literal one-dimensional walk to act 3, you’ll have metric boatloads of exposition just unloaded on your head. As Heather starts to inquire about the town, we get the simple answer that the town was home to a seedy cult, but soon, people start raving on about psyches that were split in half, a God that will cleanse the world of sin, and some kind of “Seal of Metatron.”

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D
“No. Metatron.”