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Reviews
Silent Hill: Revelation (2012)
3D movies and Distance
I never turn down a free movie. My friend Dan had passes to the premier of Silent Hill: Revelation in 3D, and so of course I went. My only preconceived notion of the film was that it would be terrible, but I didn't care. I'll give you more about the movie first. Silent Hill: Revelation is a sequel. The sequel follows the girl who escaped a town called Silent hill in the first movie due to her mother's sacrifice. In this film, Sharon, the little girl from the original, follows her kidnapped father to Silent Hill, and there finds her true identity as the good part of the evil teenager that threatens the hellish city. Why anyone would want to save Silent Hill, I'm not sure. The movies are based on the video games, which explains a lot about how dumb the plot is, how empty the characters are, and how the whole notion of hell in this movie doesn't make any sense. I'm sorry gamers, I'm sure the game is very good. When the movie first starts, the 3D is amazing! Snow fell from the air all around the giggling audience and it was beautiful. At that point, I felt that I knew what 3D was about, and I was excited. But then, as the movie went on, I started to fixate on the different ways in which 3D was employed and why. I'm a little obsessed about proximity and distance and how authors manipulate the reader into being close or distant as a literary device. The concept of historical distance, from which I'm very loosely drawing, refers to the in which historical writers used proximity and distance to bring readers close, or to have them assess events from a safe distance. I wondered, as I watch Silent Hill how this pertains to 3D film. 3D film has been around in some fashion since 1915 , and was widely popular in the 1950′s (Wikipedia). The popularity of 3D film died down due to do cost, and possibly because it's really not that cool. Anyway, I thought that in a horror movie, the idea of 3D was to bring the audience near the action. In the case of the falling snow, I felt like I was in silent hill, I felt close to the world the film tried to create for me. Unfortunately, for the rest of the movie, I often felt further away from the action than I should have. The audience finds itself watching the action, or even hiding from it, behind a chain-linked fence, a log, a box. Because the object of the protagonist was not to kill, but to find out who she is, her avoidance of trouble makes for a very lame 3D movie. As we follow the main character, we avoid the action. In essence, this film made me feel like a sort of double spectator, far removed from not just the spectacular violence in the film, but also from the emotions I was meant to feel. But I guess all this makes sense, right? The film was based on a video game in which the purpose is to kill enemies and take helpful hints and objects from strangers. And that's exactly what happened in the movie. Aside from one part in which a large knife sticks out of the screen toward the audience, which didn't even yield a scream, the three dimension action is pretty much a total waste. The culmination of the film was on a spinning merry-go-round, aptly creating mounting tension and confusion, thank heavens. As a horror flick, the movie does everything it's supposed to, but it's just not scary. The one genre component that sticks out the most is the uncomfortable blurring of boundaries dead/alive, good/evil, real/imaginary. Perhaps the biggest downfall for a non-gamer was the fact that this movie sacrificed plot to appease the writers of gamer fan fiction. Characters didn't make sense, specifically Sharon, who although she is supposed to be scared by her terrifying past, trusts everyone in her path even the son of the evil queen of Silent hill who has been sent to bring her back to hell to destroy her. There is also this scene in which Sharon, who is running through hell avoiding faceless human-like monsters, befriends another girl for all of two seconds, trusting her enough to bring her along on her attempted escape, until this empty character meets her doom. Oh, and not to mention how the boyfriend character professes his love after knowing Sharon for a period of hours, pledging to her that he would never leave her. This particular aspect of the movie sent people into hysterics Also in terms of devices, the pop out scare factor paled in comparison to better horror flicks like Insidious or Paranormal Activities 1 and 2–I didn't jump at all. So, I've only seen the film once, but I must admit that had I paid, which I wouldn't have, I would have been very disappointed. Like so many first episodes of American Idol, it was painful to watch this anticipated movie crash and burn; although, judging from the gamer fans on IMDb, I must be missing something.