Silent Hill: Revelation 3D (2012)

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D arrives as the second installment in a franchise adapted from Konami's long-running video game series, and it carries the distinct air of a production that has lost the thread. M. J. Bassett wrote and directed, stepping in after assorted imprisonments and scheduling conflicts cleared the field. The plot concerns Heather Mason, who learns on the eve of her eighteenth birthday that her name, her memories, and her father are not what they seem. A cult wants her. A town of ash and fog wants her. Pyramid Head, a large gentleman in a triangular helmet, wants whatever Pyramid Head wants, which the film declines to clarify. Adelaide Clemens runs through the Otherworld with admirable stamina. Sean Bean appears, is kidnapped, and is later rescued, which constitutes a career high point for his survival rate.

As a specimen of contemporary social consciousness, the film is nearly inert. A woman directed it and a young woman carries it, and Heather does spend the running time asserting herself against a patriarchal death cult that once burned a girl to use as an incubator for its god. The film shows no interest in developing that into an argument. The cast is uniformly white, the town's suffering is metaphysical instead of political, and nobody pauses to explain the moral of the story. There is no romance of consequence, no commentary on wealth, no weather beyond the metaphorical, and no sermon waiting to be delivered. The monsters are simply monsters, wet and loud and committed to the bit.

The result is a horror sequel that fails on its own terms without offending any ideological ones. The 3D is dim, the mythology is dense, and the third act collapses into exposition delivered by a woman who turns out to be a monster wearing a priestess. It is a film of fog and obligation, of returning cast members who seem mildly confused, of a director who has since expressed her regrets in public. Classified accordingly, with a low overall temperature and a small measure of sympathy for everyone involved. Two stars, generously awarded.

THEMATIC TAGS: sequel (continuation of Silent Hill, 2006). Not a remake, not a superhero film, not based on real events, not adapted from a book or comic, no Academy Awards, and no evidence of a number one domestic opening. It is, however, based on a video game, which the taxonomy does not accommodate, so that observation is filed and forgotten.