Silent Hill: Revelation (2012)

"Burn the witch."

As per this film's predecessor, I ought to make the point that I know sod all about any of the computer games. Nevertheless, this is even better than Silent Hill, and bloody scary to boot. I understand the critics don't like it, but then they know the game (Silent Hill 3, my wife tells me); I suspect that's why. My wife, incidentally, is playing the game as I type. I've promised to protect her from the monsters.

Yes, there's a plot and yes, it works fine, but this film is all about the scary imagery and set pieces and that's what I plan to focus on. If you haven't seen the film, look away now.

It's a very nightmarish film, hence the narrative style, and so of course we begin with a dream sequence in which Heather (as she's now calling herself), the daughter from the previous film, sees images of Pyramid Head and other delights and is ominously warned to stay away from a certain West Virginia town called Silent Hill.

I like Heather's little speech in class; she moves around, won't be around long, and there's little point in the other students getting to know her. We quickly get a sequence of scary kids, reminding me a little of Village of the Damned. But we soon shift to a dream sequence and, after sequences introducing fellow student Vincent, with whom she muses philosophically on dreams vs. reality, reflecting exactly how the film is narratively structured, and a mysterious detective called Douglas Cartland, who promptly dies. Several delightfully unnerving dream sequences later, the action finally shifts to Silent Hill itself. The direction is already superb.

Having learned the backstory- fire burning underground, religious zealots etc- Heather, alongside Vincent, gains a McGuffin, loses both Vincent and her Dad as hostages, and gets some expository guff about how she's the only good part of Alessa's soul. More interestingly, we get a deeply scary scenes with shop window dummies which I very much hope strongly influences any future appearance of the Autons in Doctor Who. The plastic mannequin spider in the middle of its web is amazing. This is by far the highlight of the film.

Of course, we get scenes of Pyramid Head chopping off prisoners' hands, and we get to see the dilapidated amusement park again as the denouement plays out. The film ends very abruptly, it must be said, and I'm not sure a happy ending could ever have satisfied, but I very much enjoyed this film.

Silent Hill (2006)

“ God is not here…”

It’s a little odd to be reviewing a film based on a computer game I’ve never played, but there we are. I used to play computer a lot until the early ‘90s, but then my teenage self discovered Nirvana, Metallica, and all sorts of other bands. Immediately the purchases of computer games ceased to make way for CD’s, and that’s how things have remained ever since. I’m not saying I haven’t played any games at all in the last eighteen years or so: I have an on-again-off-again Civilization III habit, and obviously there’s Angry Birds. But I’m essentially not a gamer. So let’s just say I’m aware this film is based on a game, right down to things like camera angles, but leave it at that. I’ll just treat this as a film and ignore its origins.

Oh, and I’m back, incidentally. I’m now settled into a new flat with the very lovely Gem, who is wonderful enough to tolerate my blogging. I won’t be blogging quite as often- I want to spend time with my gorgeous lady, after all- but expect multiple posts a week and we’ll see how it goes. Also, the proportion of films to television is likely to change. Anyway…

This is a very well directed and rather odd film full of weird and cool CGI monsters (I luuurve Pyramid Head! and a positively frightening attempt at an American accent by Sean Bean. But it’s fundamentally about a weird and very American religious cult straight out of seventeenth century Puritan New England, will a bit of Witchfinder General and The Wicker Man thrown in; this often feels half horror flick, half The Crucible. It’s a fascinating peek into how the dark, small town prejudices that lead to the Salem witch trials so pervade the American imagination and seep into popular culture. The true monster in this film is religious conformity and theocracy; there’s a very secular message in which reason is opposed gto superstition and revealed truth.

All that said, though, most of the coolness revolves around the monsters trying to get people in deliciously disgusting ways. The monsters with gas masks, though… possibly influenced by a certain Doctor Who story, methinks! There are also nice plot twists, most obviously the whole changeling thing, but also the uber-cool ending: her husband can’t see her because she’s dead.

Perhaps the CGI could be criticised for being unrealistic, but realism isn’t the be all and end all, and it’s not inappropriate to have a kind of computer graphics feel in the circumstances. Besides, lack of realism means the gore can be pushed further, especially at the end, with the gloriously sick crucifixions and barbed wire tortures.

I rather enjoyed this, which is a good thing as I’ll be watching an awful lot of horrors in the near future, courtesy of the DVD’s from my lovely girlfriend.