RETURN TO SILENT HILL (2026)

A Video Game Adaptation That Gets Lost in the Fog.

Grade: D

---

(**Possible Spoiler Alert!!**)

The Silent Hill series of has long endured as being among the most popular survival horror games in history. Return to Silent Hill is interesting in that it is not the first time its director, Christophe Gans, has tackled the material, but neither is it a sequel to his previous film, Silent Hill, made twenty years ago. That movie, which is based on the first game in the series, followed a desperate mother trying to find her adopted daughter in the eponymous ghost town. Return does not share Silent Hill 06’s continuity, or that of its follow-up, Silent Hill Revelations (2012), but is rather a direct adaptation of Silent Hill 2, the most popular game in the series. Unfortunately, the new movie fails to subvert the argument that video games are best left as video games. While not a complete failure (unlike, say 2021’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City), it gets seriously lost in its own plot and ends on a note that will have people asking, “What was the point of it all?!”

            Return to Silent Hill follows James Sunderland (Jeremy Irvine), who is separated from his beloved girlfriend, Mary (Hannah Emily Anderson). One drunken night, he gets a letter from Mary asking him to return to Silent Hill, where they first met. Upon arriving, he finds the town largely deserted, shrouded in fog and ash. Soon he finds himself being hunted by hideous, monstrous creatures. As he navigates the infernal landscape, trying to find Mary, it is gradually implied that James himself may somehow be the cause of all the horror surrounding him.

            One of Return to Silent Hill’s greatest successes is one it shares with the first movie, namely, the look and feel of the town and the creatures inhabiting it. The scenes where James encounters the monsters definitely deliver some scares; one of the best is a large, nasty spider with Mary’s face. Early on, James is chased into an apartment building by thousands of large bugs in a moment that is sure to make some viewers squirm. Gans and his production team once again make Silent Hill look like a dark, grimy, ugly place that no one would want to stay in, adding to the atmosphere.

            Another one of the film’s strengths is Irvine’s performance as James. He is not given much to do outside running around in the dark with a flashlight, and his acting is not exactly Oscar worthy, but he still manages to convey his characters’ dread, grief, rage, and even madness enough to carry the movie along.

            Unfortunately, as is the case with many video game movies, the story is where it stumbles. At a certain point, it becomes clear that much of what is going on is in James’s mind, and this is all some plot to make him remember what really happened between him and Mary. The movie practically abandons the town altogether and becomes a series of surreal segments as James is shown to be literally navigating a maze. While aesthetically interesting, this third act drags on for a very long time, and it shouldn’t be too hard for viewers who haven’t played the game (or read about it online) to guess the ultimate twist. It all makes Return to Silent Hill appear somewhat derivative of the film Jacob’s Ladder (1990), which is somewhat ironic, since that movie directly inspired the games.

            As might be expected from a psychological horror film, there are many questions left unanswered. Is Eddie (Pearce Egan), a man James encounters in the apartment building, real? Or is he in his head? Pyramid Head (a.k.a. Red Pyramid), a hulking brute with a large, triangular helmet, is given an apparent origin, but what about the bugs or the armless, faceless humanoids that spew acid? What part of James’s psyche are they from? On that note, Pyramid Head, the most famous monster in the franchise, is underutilized here, only appearing in two scenes.

            Then there’s the climax, which feels like a lazy cheat and seems to suggest that none of it actually happened, or was just a warning against it possibly happening. Apparently, Silent Hill 2 is one of those games with multiple possible endings, depending on the player’s actions. If the conclusion here is taken from one of these endings, then it would seem as though Gans chose the happiest one, but it subverts any impact the movie might have had and essentially ruins the implied message that James needs to let go of Mary.

            Gans apparently wanted to adapt Silent Hill 2 for years but held back because he thought that Silent Hill 1 should be the first game made into a movie. For all the faults of his first film (and there were quite a few), it still contained a heavy atmosphere and sense of dread. That dread is also present in Return to Silent Hill, but it is nowhere near as strong. For all its beautiful cinematography and production design, and for all the heart Gans clearly put into everything, just about the best thing that can be said is that he has fulfilled his dream of making a film version of Silent Hill 2.

---

Director: Christophe Gans

Screenplay: Christophe Gans, Sandra Vo-Anh, Will Schneider (Based on the video game Silent Hill 2 by Konami)

Producers: Victor Hadida, Molly Hassel, David M. Wulf

Cast: Jeremy Irvine (James Sunderland), Hannah Emily Anderson (Mary Crane/Maria/Angela/Moth Mary), Evie Templeton (Laura), Robert Strange (Pyramid Head), Nicola Alexis (M), Pearse Egan (Eddie)

Rated: R (for bloody violent content, language, and brief drug use)