Will it have a decent shot at making its budget back? Then it's green-lit. It's as simple as that. If there's a chance that might have some trouble doing so, they just make it in 3D so that they can charge $14.00 for a ticket and make their money back artificially by having each ticket sale essentially count as two. This is not difficult math to figure out. And with the overseas market which eats up American films like they were candy, they don't have to spend a lot of money to turn a profit. Which is why sequels rarely ever have bigger budgets.
I'm not mad at this, by the way. It's a business. I understand that businesses exist to make money. That's what they do. I'm just sad. I'm sad that so little care is given to quality. It's quantity that is the important thing. Quantity as quickly as possible once some modicum of success is found.
What I don't understand about "Silent Hill: Revelation" (Ugh. See "Lessons With Professor Pat #75" for my thoughts on that title. I'm so tired of complaining about it.) is why it took so long for it to get made. It's been 6 years since "Silent Hill." You would have thought that if they waited that long to make another one it would either be either a reboot or some kind of carefully crafted follow up. But this is a direct sequel, and it comes across has having been made in about 2 weeks after a drunken bet/cocaine party.
It's clear right from the very beginning that this movie was not made with the same artistic style and subtlety (yes, damn it, subtlety) that the original was. The sets look cheap, the effects are cartoonish as opposed to gritty and surreal, everything has that same crisp, glossy sheen that you see in music videos or the "Star Wars" prequels or the Platinum Dunes remakes of "Friday the 13th" and "A Nightmare On Elm Street." It is so far removed from the tone of the first film that it seems less like a sequel and more like a cut-scene from one of the games as directed by some no-name hack.
Hey look. Pyramid Head is in the latest Linkin Park video. How appropriate.
Not surprisingly, the best parts of "Silent Hill: Revelation" are whenever we're watching a flashback to the far superior "Silent Hill." And the flashbacks are all from the 8 mm sequence it had, which, even though it purposefully looked grainy and cheap, looks leagues better than anything else we see in this movie. Mostly because it looked somewhat real. This movie looks more like someone smeared Vaseline on an action-figure play-set.
After the events of "Silent Hill," we see that Harry (Sean Bean) and his daughter Heather (Adelaide Clemens) are living a somewhat nomadic lifestyle, going from town to town, always on the run from the cult of Silent Hill. They are constantly pursuing them in an effort to drag Heather back to the town, so that Alessa can be destroyed once and for all.
"But hold up," anyone who may have seen the first film might be saying. "Don't they mean 'Sharon' and not 'Heather?' And how in the world did she get back to Sean Bean? Didn't the end of the first movie imply that Silent Hill was like Hotel California in that you can check out but you can never leave? And where's Radha Mitchell? And aren't all the cultists dead? Wasn't that the entire point of the first film?"
I can explain some of that. The first is that Heather is indeed Sharon from the first movie, but she's changed her name so as to hide from the cultists. Why they continue to call her Heather after she's actually IN Silent Hill again I'm not so sure since at that point you're not really in Witness Protection anymore, are you? Just use your name at that point. It's confusing otherwise. This is especially so because since Radha Mitchell spent most of "Silent Hill" screaming "SHARON!!!" at the top of her lungs, I've kind of permanently associated that name with that character. Every time they call her Heather I have to mentally adjust the dialogue.
Well, on the plus side Adelaide Clemens looks so much like Radha Mitchell that she could be her daughter, so that's good casting. What? The character is adopted? Oh. Never mind.
It was also nice of them to completely obscure Jodelle Ferland's face from the numerous flashbacks they show to the first film, so that we never see her. That's fantastic. Thanks for that. I'm sure Jodelle also appreciated it since that meant you probably didn't have to pay her anything after recasting her character since she's older now. Even though there's no way that we would probably even be able to notice a difference between the new girl and Jodelle under that makeup, let alone mistake them for a different spooky little white faced girl in a purple dress who is ON FIRE. Heaven forbid this movie get confusing.
Sharon/Heather was indeed apparently able to escape from Silent Hill as explained by Rose (Radha Mitchell) via vision/hallucination to Sean Bean. From my understanding of it, somehow Rose found a way to send her back with no memories of the events of the first film, but she couldn't come back herself for some reason. That's about all the explanation you get, which is pretty much the screenwriter waving his hand like Obi-Wan Kenobi and saying "You don't need to concern yourself with that." I choose to believe Rose is a wizard, but only had enough magic for one last spell. It makes more sense that what "Silent Hill: Revelation" gave me.
As to the cultists of Silent Hill, out of all the inane, nonsensical ramblings of this film's story, that makes the least amount of sense. Even though at the end of the first film Alessa got her revenge and butchered the cultists like a Velociraptor in a room full of paraplegics, apparently now Alice Krige's character had a sister we've never heard of before, Claudia Wolf (Carrie-Anne Moss) and there's even more cultists now, despite Alessa running around free with impunity and nobody to stop her.
"Oh, we've been here the whole time. You didn't see us in the basement? We were all totally there."
So okay, fair question here: If Alessa got her revenge, who are these chuckle-heads living in Silent Hill now? How did they get there if Silent Hill was all about trapping the people who wronged her? Were they part of the original cultists, too? Why wouldn't Alessa just up and kill them since they have no sanctuary anymore? Why is this Claudia Wolf person able to operate out in the open if Alessa is unstoppable like they claim? And how is the undercover reluctant cultist Vincent (Kit Haringon) able to leave Silent Hill to go after Heather? If he can leave, why can't Rose?
And these are nitpicks, but how does the hell-scape of Silent Hill have a fully operational mental institution complete with people who must have to do paperwork and answer phones since we clearly see typed files on patients interned and answering boards lit up? Who would be calling? Do they pay people to work there? Do the demons have desk jobs sometimes? Do they have unions? Why is there even a need for a mental institution in what is essentially Hell? Everyone there is crazy. Are there people more crazy than crazy? Why is there a carnival? In fact, how does Silent Hill even have electricity?
AND WHY THE HELL IS MALCOM MCDOWELL IN THIS MOVIE!?
Seriously, Malcom? Is there anything you won't do for a paycheck? I know this is probably one of the bigger films you've been in recently, but for the love of Pazuzu you were in "A Clockwork Orange!" You are such a good actor, but you seem to only enjoy being in terrible, terrible tripe! Stop that, please! You can say "no," Malcom. You really can! I guess it doesn't really matter much. His part probably took a day to film at most. And he's unsurprisingly the best part of the whole affair despite his sole scene lasting all of 3 minutes, tops. I don't know what he got paid, but for a day's work it was probably pretty good.
So Heather and Vincent go to Silent Hill after Sean Bean gets kidnapped, Vincent turns out to be a cultist who lured her there but he is having second thoughts about it, they get captured, he gets thrown in the mental institution, she meets Malcom McDowell, there's something about this talisman that I never had the slightest clue as to the purpose of, she springs Vincent, there's a carnival, she joins with Alessa much like Rose did in the first movie, Pyramid Head comes and kills Claudia Wolf (which makes both Heather and Alessa's involvement utterly pointless since neither does anything to stop the villain), and then they leave but Sean Bean stays behind to find Rose. Foreshadow another sequel. That's the movie.
And no, I have no idea why they can freely leave Silent Hill, but Rose is somehow still trapped. That makes at least 5 people who have left the town without incident. What's Rose's hold up? Why are the rules as to when or if you can enter or leave Silent Hill apparently random? I wouldn't have as much of a problem if the rules were indeed totally nonsensical but it seems that the characters all understand what's going on like they have a pamphlet called "Silent Hill's Bullshit and You." Everyone gets it but the audience.
Some consistency is all I ask. Can I get some rules? Some order? Anything?
What's so frustrating about a movie like "Silent Hill: Revelation" is that it's clearly made with the expectation that the viewer has an encyclopedic knowledge of the games. I can't imagine it making the slightest bit of sense otherwise. But on the other hand, it's also clear based on my observations that this is most likely absolutely nothing like the games. And I can tell because I can't imagine a game having a story that made so little sense.
It's obvious that there are many, many references spread throughout, such as numbers on hotel doors given prominence and a red high-heeled shoe being in an obvious and very awkward place for no good reason other than it's clearly from the game. But all that doesn't make it an accurate adaptation. That just means there's a bunch of random stuff from the games thrown in there. There's a big difference between adapting something for the screen and just throwing nuggets of fan-service at us, and this is a movie whose narrative is completely fueled by that.
It would be akin to taking a box of "Star Wars" action figures, holding them up one by one and saying "Hey! Remember Luke Skywalker? Remember Han Solo? Remember Darth Vader? He has a red lightsaber that goes PSHFOOSHWOOOWOWOWOWOW! Nerf herder!!" and expecting that to make a cohesive narrative.
I'm guessing that pink bunny means something to someone, but all I get out of it is confusion and sadness.
I know there's probably answers to all of the questions I brought up. I know that if someone knew the games backwards and forwards they would probably be able to piece together the whys and hows. But that's no excuse for babbling incoherence. A film should be able to stand on its own merits apart from the source material. It's the same with novel adaptations. I shouldn't have to do research on what I'm watching while I'm watching it to make sense of anything. That's Screenplay 101.
And on top of everything else, it can't even make good use of its frankly outstanding cast. There are some heavy hitters in here with Bean and McDowell, and Carrie-Anne Moss is no slouch either. Plus I was really excited to see Kit Harington in something besides "Game of Thrones," as I think he's got a really promising career ahead of him after he's done being Jon Snow. But here he's just wasted talent along with the rest of them, though I did get a nerdy charge out of him saying "The dark is coming" since, you know, that and winter. Even our lead Adelaide Clemens, though she's still a relative unknown in American films, has potential I suppose. But she's certainly not given much to work with. And despite playing a grown up Jodelle Ferland, I assure you, she is no Jodelle Ferland.
I'm going to ask a very, very, VERY simple question here, by the way. In the movie, it's been 8 years since the events of the first film. In real life, it's been 6 years since "Silent Hill." Jodelle is 18 now. Same age as the character in "Silent Hill: Revelation." Why didn't they just, oh I don't know, CAST JODELLE FERLAND TO PLAY THE PART AGAIN? Does that just make too much damn sense? Plus it'd be the first film she's headlined since "Tideland" in 2005. Give the girl work!
Not that I'd want to see Jodelle in this crap, but DAMN IT, people! The person in this picture is the appropriate age to play her character again! This isn't hard!
Honestly, I don't know how I would have made this movie work. Having not played the games, I couldn't tell you if there's a good story to be made into a movie in there. There probably is, but at the very least, I can't see it involving any of these characters. Maybe if a new set of people got caught in Silent Hill there might be something to it. But then again, maybe it's best to just leave it alone for once and not make a sequel. How's that for a novel concept?
Check out the trailer and know that it's even worse than it looks.
THE BOTTOM LINE - "Silent Hill: Revelation" is a mess. The story is rubbish, it looks cheap, and it squanders a pretty solid cast. Die-hard fans of the games would probably understand it better, but I can't see them enjoying it. In fact they'd probably hate it more than me because I'm guessing they screwed the source material up pretty badly. I'm neutral on it when it comes to fandom, but I do hate it for being a lousy follow-up to a movie I really liked. Boo hiss.
I totally agree, Jodelle would have been an obvious choice to play Sharon again (and I'd love to see her have a starring role again) but apparently they didn't want someone who a tually looked like her character in the first movie? :/
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