You would think that, having not liked the first Silent Hill, that my first tip-off to this being a bad movie would have been that it’s a sequel to a bad movie that’s in 3D. Or how about the fact that it stars Sean Bean and Malcolm McDowell? You would think that for someone who spends time noticing details, that I would have been warned by these air raid sirens. And while that’s a fair assumption, you’ve clearly underestimated the masochist in me.

Enter Silent Hill: Revelation. Now, I saw this film because I am a huge fan of the video game franchise, citing this as one of the scariest experiences I’ve ever had playing a video game. The music for the video games is haunting, the characters and monsters are something pulled from Clive Barker, and the locations in the game I heard once described as “something out of a Nine Inch Nails music video.” These video games redefine fear, daring you to play these games with the lights off.

Silent Hill: Revelation follows young Heather Mason, a girl who is completely comfortable moving every few years because her father killed a guy in their own home. (SPOILER ALERT: The movie sucks.) Constantly suffering from nightmares, Heather opens a handy-dandy crate she never bothered opening before; it is filled with all of the right answers. Now, she realizes that her night terrors are actually manifestations of the nightmare town known as Silent Hill, which exists in another plane of reality that you must enter with your own free will (even though two people are abducted and taken there). Heather sets out to find her father and boyfriend of five minutes and sets out to uncover the mystery of Silent Hill and face her other evil self, Alessa.

So, what happened? Well, there’s this thing called story that technical personnel seem to forget about all the time. This movie had all of the elements listed above and still fell flat on it’s face because so many story elements are missing. Characters and dialog here are so wooden you could build a deck with them. Not just pages, but entire chunks of the script seem to be missing, and we’re suddenly going from one place to another without any real danger or purpose.

This film really could have been something. It introduced a really cool concept that dreams are really endless realities, and it had a great deal going for it. It promises you a dark carnival ride through the twisted landscape of Hell, and gives you a Judgment House run by Juggalos.

I really wanted to like this film. It had so many really cool elements going for it. Whatever you do, don’t drink the Faygo.