Silent Hill: Revelation

"Come to Silent Hill" reads a "scary" message left for teen damsel Heather. Hell, no.

I realize it's called Silent Hill for a reason, but enduring this botched (video game-based) nightmare is like sleepwalking into the world's dullest Halloween party.

"Revelation" is incredibly boring as well as totally baffling.

Demonstrates what half the budget and twice the story can do to turn a fake nightmare into a real chore.

The distinction between actors and special effects shrinks ever further in the video game-turned-horror film Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, which reduces its human players to plastic action figures in tired genre settings.

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D quickly devolves into a smorgasbord of sutured faces and blades poking the viewer in the eye.

Somehow manages to avoid delivering much of what made either the first movie or the original video game series appealing, with its confounding narrative feeling entirely accidental as opposed to intentionally mysterious.

I was impressed by the film's production values and visual panache. Between the Rembrandt burnish of the cinematography and the antique-store detail of the design, ugliness has never looked so pretty.

A mesmerizing display of human grotesquerie like Hieronymous Bosch filtered through Clive Barker, and that's exactly how it should be.

It's one of the better videogame adaptations, up there with the original Silent Hill and, eh, Doom?