Silent Hill: Revelation 3D

 (2012) **

Well as I feared the second film did not measure up to the first. Rose is now out of the picture so we join a teenaged Sharon and her father as they are just moving into a new house in a new town. They apparently have had to keep moving because not only are they fugitives from the police but unbeknownst to his daughter a bunch of evil dudes from Silent Hill are trying to lure her back. Sharon is being plagued by nightmares that she doesn’t understand and the visions are starting to merge with the real world. Her father is suddenly abducted and the only clue is a bloody message on the wall telling her to go to Silent Hill, the very place her father warned her never to go to. Of course she decides to go there to rescue him and she reads a box full of informative letters and notes from her father that clue her in on the truth about her past and her connection to the town. Once she arrives she must endure a whole mess of weird creatures and horrors untold if she wants to save her Dad.

 One of the redeeming scenes in the film involved an outstanding but far too short lived performance from Malcolm McDowell in the insane asylum.

First of all there is way too much focus on trying to startle the audience with 3D in your face monsters, this was cheap and ineffective. There is far too much dialog in the film, all the constant filling in of back story and explaining why Sharon is such a hot commodity in Silent Hill just makes it boring. It took way too long for them to actually get to Silent Hill and by the time they do I had pretty much lost interest. The atmosphere is all wrong, it just doesn’t feel at all like the game. That apprehensive, dark, what is coming for me around the next corner feeling just wasn’t there for me. I played these games and where the first film was able to capture it so brilliantly this sequel falls flat on it’s 3D face. The main villainess looks more like a cenobite from Hellraiser than a creature from Silent Hill. I did give it a full two stars for the beautiful 3D effect of the continually falling ash that floated around in front of me and the creativeness in some of the creatures (e.g. the spider creature). Worst part for me was that it just wasn’t scary, not at all. Sigh, life truly is full of little disappointments.