Silent Hill: Revelation

Good god what a piece of crap.

This is the second movie in the Silent Hill film franchise... and I'm going to do my best to make what little sense I can from it. 

First off, anyone play the games? I only played the second one. From what I could make of the plot, some dude arrives to the town of Silent Hill (a fictional place in the northeast of America) based on a letter he received from his dead wife. As you progress through the game, you basically just see this town fade in-and-out of a "hell mode" where monsters come out to kill you. Why is the town like this? Honestly, I cannot recall. I just assumed this place was hell or something. There were various endings to try and explain things -- one even showing a dog behind a set of computers running the show -- but I don't think an honest ending really mattered in the game. It was enough to just explore creepy, desolate streets layered in fog and mystery. I mean, did there have to be any more than that? Apparently there did.

Later I saw the first movie -- still confusing as fuck -- but provides some context to the story that was actually established in the first game. Here's the low-down, which is kind of necessary to understand before I even begin to unpack the second film (SPOILERS): So there's this small, ultra-religious town where a young girl, who's bullied in school and has no friends, is raped by the school's janitor leading to her becoming pregnant. The town turns on the girl, citing it's evil to have a child out of wedlock, and attempts to burn her at the stake. Things go wrong and the girl falls free of the fire before she could die (just before) and a few non-crazy people smuggle her away to safety. With burns all over her body, the girl goes into this pain-fueled rage that causes her soul to split into two parts: one good and one evil. Both parts of the soul taking on the manifestation of a little girl; the good girl is taken away from Silent Hill to an orphanage (later to be adopted by Sean Bean) while the evil one chills in town conjuring demons from Hell to torment any passersby. 

That's the backstory on Silent Hill -- again, from what I could loosely grasp at.

Here we come to this film -- the sequel to a film we never really needed to being with. Remember that good little girl that was adopted by Sean Bean? We follow the events of the first film (where she's a little girl and her mom takes her into Silent Hill only to recuse her from it), she's now a teenager and on the road with dear old dad apparently evading cult members from Silent Hill (mind you... not the demons, but the super religious townsfolk that have somehow survive the horrors their town). Upon entering a new city and a new school, the girl makes friends with Kit Harington (yeah... there are two GoT stars in this film!) who she's forced to flee the school with once she learns that the cult has caught her father. Learning that her father has been dragged back to Silent Hill, she faces her fears and returns to the place with her evil other half still lives. (And her mother... but we conveniently forget that.) 

Now, I think the title refers to the fact that our main character (which I haven't referred to her by name yet because she uses several fake names -- used while on the run with pa -- and I could never keep it straight what her actual name is... so I call her girl!) who has to re-learn the horrible truth of Silent Hill (the same shit her mother discovers in the first film when she's just a kid) then has the revelation that the evil is her other half. 

By the way, this is her evil other half. The source of insurmountable hatred and destruction looks like Snoopy. 

Casting aside that the scary evil source of Silent Hill looks like a kid in a trick-or-treat costume, the whole second film is essentially just a repeat of information found in the first movie only our main character is just a few years older and is able to take on this shit herself. Still... Meh...

We also have other more common problems outside just a redundant and unnecessarily complicated story. There's shitty acting, shitty dialogue, and relatively non-scary, non-sensical monsters.

A spider, mannequin monster... This was a thing.

All-in-all, the film is boring. And, although stupid, just not stupid enough for me really find enjoyment in it. Much like the eerie fog covering the town of Silent Hill, the movie exists in this grey banality where I found myself just not giving a shit about what happened to the characters.

What does happen to them?

Well the girl and John Snow rescue Sean Bean after the girl discovers she can control aspects of the Silent Hill evil. Protected by Pyramid Head (perhaps the only cool thing left in the film) who battles the head of the cult, Carrie-Anne Moss, and defeats her. As the group of survivors go to leave the town, Sean Bean stops, remembers his wife is technically still trapped somewhere in the town from events in the first film all those years ago. So he ditches his daughter (???) and heads back into the fog unarmed and injured leaving the two kids to drive off out of sight. Yup... That all totally makes sense. Surprisingly, this is probably one of the very few roles Sean Bean has played where he's yet to die. Perhaps that will happen in a potential sequel. 

You see... the film ends with a prison bus and two police cruisers driving into the fog of Silent Hill and our heroes leave for safety. Another sequel? God, I hope not.