SILENT HILL. (2006) BASED ON A VIDEO GAME BY KONAMI. WRITTEN AND
DIRECTED BY CHRISTOPHE GANS. PRODUCED BY SAMUEL HADIDA AND DON
CARMODY.
STARRING SEAN BEAN, RADHA MITCHELL,
LAURIE HOLDEN, DEBORAH KARA UNGER, ALICE KRIGE AND JODELLE FERLAND.
SILENT HILL: REVELATION. (2012) BASED ON A VIDEO GAME BY KONAMI. WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY MICHAEL J. BASSETT. PRODUCED BY SAMUEL HADIDA
AND DON CARMODY.
STARRING SEAN BEAN, RADHA MITCHELL,
ADELAIDE CLEMENS, KIT HARINGTON, CARRIE-ANNE MOSS, MALCOLM MCDOWELL
AND DEBORAH KARA UNGER.
I gotta be honest with you. I hated both
these films, stylish-looking though they undoubtedly are. I hated
REVELATION even more than its
predeccessor, for reasons I'll explain later.
The
first one has Radha Mitchell from the excellent crocodile monster-movie ROGUE
married to Sean Bean, or Boromir
from LORD OF THE RINGS, which
is how I personally prefer to remember him. They have an adopted
daughter called Sharon who sleepwalks and constantly mumbles about a
place called SILENT HILL in
her dreams. What gives? What gives indeed...?
Chris
Da Silva, the Dad, wants to keep going with medication and therapy
for the kid. I want to state for the record that I agree with the
Dad. But Mom, obviously a crazy lady, has a much worse and far more
life-threatening idea than Dad's. She packs the kid into the Jeep and, against her husband's wishes, I might add, actually drives her to
the place on the map known as Silent Hill. You just know
she's gonna regret this, don't
you...?
Anyway, in
Silent Hill the Mom, known as Rose, encounters way more than she
bargained for back when she was merely looking to probe a little
deeper into her adopted daughter's troubled past and mind. Silent
Hill is an abandoned mining town, and as cool to look at as any other
abandoned town you might see in a supernatural horror film. I can't fault it on that score.
Underground
fires still burn in the town and hideous malformed creatures roam at will. In
addition, a totally wacko witch-burning cult holds sway over the
town's remaining inhabitants and there's a sinister connection between them
and Rose's daughter Sharon, who hops it the second they hit Silent
Hill, leaving her mother to search frantically for her before the mad
culties get a hold of her.
We've got
cute little mis-shapen Coal Babies that resemble Jelly Babies in the
town and a Pyramid-Headed humanoid monster with a gigantic sword and
a triangular-shaped helmet called- you guessed it!- Pyramid Head.
He's quite an interesting and terrifying movie villain, I'll give him
that, easily as scary as Pinhead or any of those lads.
We've
also got sexy but scary big-bosomed nurses with bandaged faces and
impractically high-heeled shoes who like to stab at people with their sharp shiny scalpels, and a hot blonde cop called Cybill who's on Mom's side, or the
side of law and order at least.
Cybill tries to reason with the cult about the burning issues of the day- excuse the pun- but there ain't no reasoning with that bunch of judgemental, fanatical Bible-thumpers. And all the while, a layer of ash floats gently and dreamily down over the alternate reality known as Silent Hill. It might sound pleasant but, trust me, you don't wanna go there...
Cybill tries to reason with the cult about the burning issues of the day- excuse the pun- but there ain't no reasoning with that bunch of judgemental, fanatical Bible-thumpers. And all the while, a layer of ash floats gently and dreamily down over the alternate reality known as Silent Hill. It might sound pleasant but, trust me, you don't wanna go there...
The
sequel, SILENT HILL: REVELATION, sees
a grown-up Sharon hot-footing it back to Silent Hill to save her Dad,
now known as Harry. He's been kidnapped by a new generation of the
culties in order to lure Sharon back to the place, because it's
Sharon they want, just like before. They have the sacrifice to end
all sacrifices lined up and guess who's the lucky sacrificial
lamb...?
Sharon has
company in the form of a curly-headed schoolfriend called Vincent Cooper,
who's not all he's cracked up to be either. Together they attempt to
battle the horrors of Silent Hill and rescue Harry.
Malcolm McDowell,
in his day trememdously handsome and a fantastic actor, has a cameo
role in
the
film as a crazy guy. It's kind of hard to understand what he's doing
there, as his scene doesn't seem to go anywhere worth going, if you
get me. And one minute he's there, the next he's not, inexplicably.
I'm afraid both films, each of which reminded me of about
a dozen other horror films, left me cold. Unsympathetic characters and a distinct lack of any type of horror-movie atmosphere saw to that. There aren't any plans for
a third sequel to the franchise but, if they ever do make
one, I probably won't be rushing to watch it.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA
HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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