Susan Granger’s review of “Silent Hill: Revelation 3D” (Open Road Films)
There’s certainly nothing revelatory or even interesting about this ridiculously humorless horror fantasy that’s based on the popular video game franchise except, perhaps, how British screenwriter/director Michael J. Bassett (“Solomon Kane”) was able to attract a talented supporting cast that includes Carrie-Ann Moss, Deborah Kara Unger, Martin Donovan and Malcolm McDowell.
Arriving six years after the original, this grisly, gory installment finds Heather Mason (Aussie actress Adelaide Clemens) and her father Harry (Sean Bean) still on the run, always managing to keep one step ahead of malevolent forces that she doesn’t understand. Perennially plagued since childhood by terrifying nightmares, on the eve of her 18th birthday, Heather discovers that she’s not who she thinks she is, nor, perhaps, is her father. Her insatiable curiosity leads her to delve deeper into a demonic cult that threatens to trap her forever.
In case you managed to miss Christopher Gans’ 2006 “Silent Hill,” there’s lots of exposition, much of which makes little sense. Suffice it to say that the creepy little girl has grown up and is determined to thwart the evil forces that inhabit the dreamscape-like town of Silent Hill from claiming her – the way they did her adoptive mother, Rosa (Radha Mitchell). Problem is: Heather’s father disappears and there’s a message, “Come to Silent Hill,” written in blood on the wall. So, spunky Heather and her hunky high-school friend Vincent Carter (Kit Harington from TV’s “Game of Thrones”) must go back to the cursed coal-mining town rescue him from the demonic doppelganger Alessa, whose blood sacrifice caused the town’s original damnation.
“Never built on an ancient Indian burial ground,” Vincent says. “I thought everyone knew that.”
Obviously, they don’t.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Silent Hill: Revelation 3D” barely scrapes up an incomprehensible 3. Mercifully, it’s only 93 minutes long.
