Ok, before we go on, let me get this out of the way: I liked the first Silent Hill film. I feel it did a lot of things right, and the only reasons it gets flak is because (a) it has a different story from the games (which in my opinion isn't necessarily bad, because the way they handled the cult thing in the first Silent Hill game was bollocks) and (b) because most people seem too stupid to follow the plot. Some of the acting was hokey (surprisingly not by the child actress!) and there was a largely redundant sideplot, but it nonetheless kept the most important things: relevant, personified psychological symbolism in Silent Hill, and an atmosphere of uncertainty and dread. Much of it is morally ambiguous, which makes it even more interesting.
And so, on to the sequel. I read the following page:
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=71374. And it made me angry.
Silent Hill: Revelation 3D. The title already doesn't bode well... it has a colon in it, and 3D tacked onto the end.
But reading that review, what really got me was what the producers had to say:
"'Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D,' 'Paranormal Activity 2,' and 'Saw 3D' show that global audiences have a continued thirst for the horror action genre. 'Silent Hill,' like 'Resident Evil' before it, is a beloved videogame, now becomes a successful film franchise that both encompasses and transcends the game world."
Oh great. Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D. Notice how similar the structure of that title is to Silent Hill: Revelation 3D. Also note that Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D has a rating of 6.1 on IMDB (but then the original Silent Hill has a rating of 6.5, so maybe I'll shut up about that). For a fuller idea of how awful the Resident Evil movie is, see the following review, it sums it up best:
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/current-movie-reviews/resident-evil-afterlife.phpSo, Paranormal Activity 2, eh? Well, that one is ok I guess, if you like that sort of thing (eg, low-budget horror where most of the horror is implied rather than seen). Personally, films like this one don't appeal to me much - too much of nothing happening for too long, and a complete absence of plot.
And then Saw 3D. Again, the SomethingAwful review isn't very kind to it (
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/current-movie-reviews/saw-burke-hare.php) but the most telling thing is that's it's part of the Saw franchise. Everything that's wrong with horror today is embodied by these films - it's gratuitous violence only for gratuitous volences' sake. The first had the advantage of having at least almost believable plot, but it's pretty much become a farce since then that gets ever more stupid, unbelievable and over-the-top.
One thing that all three films have in common is an extremely flimsy or just very poorly-thought-out plot... which is a shame, since the plot in the first Silent Hill was one of the reasons I really liked it, but these producers don't seem to value that very much.
And then there's that comment they made... that what audiences want is a "horror action genre". I don't know their definition of "horror action", but if it's anything like Resident Evil, it's not Silent Hill. I've got this horrible feeling that the film is going to involve all kinds of jump-scares, disjointed shaky-cam scenes, and slow-motion shots of monsters being horribly destroyed with some sort of improvised weaponry.
Did you guys notice how in the first film, the protagonists almost never kill any of the monsters (or when they do, it's totally ineffectual in anything but the shortest term)? Yeah, that's part of why it was good. I have a feeling that's not what we're going to be getting in the sequel if the producers get their way.
And the plot of Silent Hill: Revelations seems to be based on Silent Hill 3, rather than Silent Hill 2, which is really odd considering how well they'd set up a Silent Hill 2-esque plot at the end of the first Silent Hill film.
I just hope the director, who has a real love of the material, can get his own way enough to make it good, rather than having the producers turn it into the giant turds that they so love to throw at the audience.
But for now, my expectations are about as low as you can imagine. At least that means that if I do see it, I'm not going to be disappointed.
