SILENT HILL: REVELATION 3D (Michael J. Bassett). 94 minutes. Opens Friday (October 26) See listings. Rating: NN
Silent Hill: Revelation 3D is an inferior sequel that keeps the video game moves from its source but strips out the characters, emotion and visual style that made them scary in the first film.
Heather, daughter of the original’s hero, returns to the titular abandoned, demon-infested mining town. The culties who run the place have kidnapped her father for reasons that require lots of momentum-killing exposition.
Heather runs around in confined spaces while recycled monsters pop out at her, including the metal-head chopper-wielding guy (less impressive this time) and the pervy nurses. Among the new creatures are a spider made of human heads and limbs and the fuzzy pink bunny rabbit of doom. Neither impresses.
The CG setting is extravagantly creepy, but director Michael J. Bassett doesn’t have the visual style or the need to linger that Christophe Gans displayed when he helmed the original, so we never feel like we’re lost in a maze or get a sense of the enormity of the place and the menace of its monsters.
Adelaide Clemens, our hero, and Kit Harington, her would-be boyfriend, run and scream adequately, but Carrie-Anne Moss, head of the culties, never has a chance to establish the necessary evil.
There’s plenty of gore, though, and the 3D tosses it your eye at every opportunity, providing a few shocks.
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