A Man Exploring An Abandoned Factory Captures A Very Horrifying Picture

Movie Review: Silent Hill: Revelation (2012)

Title: Silent Hill: Revelation

Release Date: October 26, 2012

Driector: Michael J Bassett

Run Time: 94 Minutes

Quick Hits:  Set several years after the original Silent Hill (2006), we find that Sharron (now known as Heather) escaped the clutches of Silent Hill and is living with her father.  She is forced to face the terrors of Silent Hill once more to try and save her father from The Order whom only want to be freed from the clutches of Alessa.

Review: Set on the eve of Heather's (aka Sharron) eighteenth birthday, we open in a nightmarish carnival setting in which she is being chased by men in gas masks and many other creepy things that we would expect from the realm of Silent Hill (which I will be referring to from here on out by SH).  Lo and behold that is exactly what this is as Heather wakes from her dream being comforted by her father, Harry, who is then attacked by another SH monster in the same way that Freddy, Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, would do using a dream within a dream scenario; Heather actually wakes up this time and everything seems to be fine.  It is revealed to us that Heather and her father have been on the run because Harry had killed a man in "self-defense."  While at school Heather "falls" back into the SH "reality" without actually returning to SH, as she starts to see the walls rust away along with seeing young children in classrooms teasing a single girl saying "burn the witch," along with another monster coming towards her.  She snaps out of it as a fellow student, Vince, bumps into her.  Feeling as though she is being followed, Heather calls her father to come meet her at the mall; as he attempts to leave the house he is attacked and kidnapped by an unknown group.  Aided by Vince, Heather travels back to SH to try and save her father.  While in SH Heather learns of her origins, being the good portion of Alessa, and the scheme that The Order has developed to free themselves from the hell that they are in.  In the end she thwarts their plan by joining back with Alessa and a little help from everybody's favorite SH monster, Pyramid Head, dispelling the fog that had consumed SH.  The movie closes with Heather and Vince catching a ride with a trucker away from SH as a police convoy transporting prisoners drives into town as the fog and ash begin to rain down once again.

If you like the SH game franchise and have seen the first movie then you pretty much know the main players and the back story leading up to this point.  As a sequel to the first movie this one kind of falls on its face.  The way that Rose, Heather's adoptive mother, is able to get Heather out of SH (if you haven't seen the first movie they are stuck there at the end and not able to leave, sorry for the spoiler) is kind of a cop-out in my opinion and is feels like it was thrown into the script just to clear up confusion haphazardly; "I just happened to find a talisman that can only get one of us out of here so I gave it to her," come on now that is kind of weak.  Speaking of weak, that pretty much sums up the whole of the story for me.  At no point are we really given anything new to pull our attention and say "wow" to like in the first SH movie.  Other than the weak story I can say that the transitions that were used to move from reality to "SH reality" were very well done, they weren't forced and were very subtle.  Whether it was just walking through a doorway or using a cutaway so that a seemingly normal person could be SH-ified.  However this is the only uplifting point of the film that I can point out.  The movie was made during the "re-introduction," if you will, of 3-D movies during the summer/fall season of 2012 and thus is has several 3-D shots that I feel distract and detract from the movie.  I am sure that the effect looks good in 3-D, but in 2-D they just look god awful.  If you want closure on the story of Silent Hill I would suggest watching it, other than that I would can only give you the advice that Harry gave to Heather at the beginning of the movie: "I want you to promise me, no matter what happens, you will never go there."

Overall Rating: 1/5

Unknown by Alexandre Bordereau

Movie Review: V/H/S (2012)

Title: V/H/S

Release date: October 5, 2012

Directors: Adam Wingard, David Bruckner, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, Radio Silence

Run TIme: 117 Minutes

Quick Hits:  A group of criminals break into a house looking for a lone VHS tape only to find hundreds and a deceased old man in a recliner in front of a group of televisions.  They proceed to watch several of the tapes, each depicting a short video of a hair raising nature, and systematically disappear.

Review:To start V/H/S is an anthology of "found footage" which over the past few years, gaining much of its popularity from the Blair Witch Project (1999), has become some what of a norm amongst the horror community.  Using this sub genre, directors garner the ability to make their stories seem more feasible in a world that has seen nearly everything .  Through the six segments, that make up the whole of the movie, we see a variety of different eerie and bizarre tales almost like that of Tales From the Crypt.  The entire thing is shot through shaky cam which at times distracts from the action in each scene and although, in my opinion, one of the segments could have been left on the cutting room floor it is a great collection.  You have the average jump scares where you can see them coming just before, but you also have several that you would have never expected that hit you right behind the eyes.  The culmination of the "main story," which is shown between each video tape, is eerie enough to keep you watching to see what happens to the five young men who are shown at the beginning of the movie along with the urge to know who sent them to the house in the first place.  Although some might say that the "found footage" sub genre is getting overplayed with the Paranormal Activity series, it is in my opinion that this movie takes it to a different level in which we aren't forced to watch the ground shoot past at high speeds or the sit there and watch as someone fast forwards through several hours of tape.

Overall Rating: 5/5

(Click on the above and below pictures to enlargen)

URBAND LEGEND: Annora Petrova

Annora Petrova was a girl who professionally ice-skated. One day she looked up her name on Google and found a creepy wikipedia page that set forth a motion of events which destroyed her life. This is what was found on her computer. 

Abandoned Six Flags New Orleans

via bigassnose

Abandoned church.

Series of photos taken of the first atomic bomb.

“Bad call? These people are dead, Burke! Don’t you have any idea what you’ve done here? I’m gonna make sure that they nail you right to the wall for this!  You’re not gonna sleaze your way out of this one. Right to the wall.”

The 40 Most Breathtaking Abandoned Places In The World

Hey! So before I begin I got this information from Vsauce my favorite science youtuber! He’s great, you’ll learn a lot from him, I know I did.

So anyway, there are 3 types of fears as examined by Stephen Kind

1) Gross-out: so gore, disease, nasty things

2) Horror: unnautural things, like a giant spider

3) Terror: when somethings creepy

What makes something creepy is ambiguity

For example masks. It masks facial expression, you don’t know how that other person is feeling. Are they a threat? Or are they nice? You just don’t know. 

Francis T Mcandrew and Sara S. Koehnke described being creeped out as an ambiguity of threats from others. (click on the pictures to enlarge)

Creepy things maybe a threat, but they are also kind of not. Like a teddy bear with a full set of human teeth. So our brains just don’t know what to do. 

So instead of carrying out a typical fear response, we just feel uneasy.

Anyway, I got the information from here as said before: X