More American Film Market news from STYD– Silent Hill will be getting a sequel called Revelations and it will be directed by Michael J. Bassett.
The director is responsible for Death Watch as well as Solomon Kane, which apparently found some success on the film festival tour and Alex seemed to enjoy, with some grievances. It is a film about an ass-kicking Puritan, so he’s got a knack for striking concepts. Silent Hill: Revelations will focus on Heather Mason from Silent Hill 3. The film has her exploring the multi-dimensional town looking for her missing father, and the answers to the strange nightmares that have plagued her as she approaches her 18th birthday. The game has her discovering a cult within Silent Hill that has nefarious god-birthin’ plans, but how closely the continuity will connect with the source material or the first film’s plot is unclear.
Silent Hill is an underrated film, that comes close to being the best of the generally awful video game adaptations. The film never quite works in a way that makes it great, and the ending is rife with problems, but tonally it fires on all cylinders. The texture and quality of the cinematography, effective atmosphere, and genuinely frightening use of iconic characters like Pyramid Head made it a very worthwhile experience. I also think it managed to find the best middle ground between the structures of a film and a game. I enjoyed her exploring the environment in a way that made sense for a horror movie, but also recalled the experience of the game, object discovery and all. Perhaps this is because the games have always tried to meet cinema in the middle anyway, I couldn’t say.
The film is being “geared” for 3D, but I don’t know what the fuck that means. It suggests a post-conversion, since it’s easy to say “shot in 3D,” but much harder to quickly phrase “well, we want to make 3D cash but don’t want to deal with shooting it that way, so we’ll convert it later and say that we composed and conceived of the film specifically for 3D framing.” I guess we’ll find out for sure when more details emerge.