I'm not even sure where to start with this one. If you're one of my regular readers you know that I don't condemn or spoil movies in my reviews. Even though I'm quite tempted to rant, and do both of those things, I will refrain myself. I suppose I'll have to start with what I thought of the original Silent Hill.

Much like with Doom, I've heard a lot of fans of the games Silent Hill 2 & 3, (apparently there's never been another good one,) say that they hate the movie for not being like the games enough. I can understand that, but overall I like the first movie. Silent Hill may have suffered from strong-woman-protagonist-is-strong-because-she-acts-like-an-insert-favorite-explitive-here, but otherwise was a pretty well-written horror movie with a more complex narrative than the usual, ghost is mad in a dark place and kills a handful of teenagers. Granted, as I've explained before, I am not a horror fan, but I typically include Silent Hill in the horror movies that I enjoy.

That being said, if you're looking for a Halloween movie to watch this weekend, just...go see Paranormal Activity 4 or Sinister instead. Silent Hill: Revelation 3D had a mediocre to kind-of-interesting core plot hook, but is very quickly forgotten thanks to the clumsy, cliché writing, the throw-away performances given by the actors, the multitude of plot holes, and the complete ignoring of continuity details from the first movie. And before someone thinks, "well, maybe it was a different take, like a pseudo-sequel," allow me to let you know that the movie goes out of its way to remind us that it's a direct sequel every few scenes with flashbacks and long recaps of the events in the first movie; the movie makers just felt like changing or ignoring many of the details from its predecessor. It was to the point that I can almost see writer/director Michael J. Bassett watching a youtube review of the first movie as the entirety of his research for creating this one, (oh and knowing a couple of details from the video game series).

Honestly, the most entertainment I got out of this movie was from the mannequin-spider, which was an admittedly a cool monster. "Woah," you say, "I thought you said you weren't going to spoil anything." Yes, I did say that, but I also said I wasn't going to condemn it too, didn't I? Besides, it's not a spoiler when the single scene that this creature is in has nothing to do with the rest of the movie, at all. In fact, that's a key fault to Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, nothing means anything anymore. There are no thematic messages at play with any visuals, events, or characters. It couldn't even get the horror-movies-are-dark thing right, (you know you're in for a bad horror movie when there are bright colors everywhere).

So we've come to the part where I compare the movie to others just in case anyone wishes to ignore my warnings and spend the $20 to venture into see this flick. This one's really hard for me. I mean, I thought coming up with similar movies of Chernobyl Diaries was bad, Silent Hill: Revelation 3D puts that movie up on Mount Olympus. The closest comparison I can make is that this is like one of those terrible direct-to-DVD sequels to a theatrical release horror film. So I guess, if you liked Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, Blood Rayne 3: Third Reich, or what the heck, The Last Airbender, that's the last movie I actually complained about the acting in, you might be able to stomach this one. I still think you'd have a better Halloween staying home and watching John Carpenter's The Thing on Netflix though.