Asking me to describe my relationship with the Silent Hill franchise is opening a Pandora’s Box of epic proportions. The series, centered around a cursed ghost town in rural Maine, has haunted, compelled, comforted, entertained, frightened, and shaped me in more ways than one can describe in a single paragraph, and thus, I won’t bore you with all of that. Heading into this review, it’s important to know that Silent Hill 2 (2001) is my favorite video game of all time, and Christophe Gans’s 2006 Silent Hill, an adaptation of the first game, is my current second favorite film of all time (behind Titanic, as I can’t just can’t quit it). I’ve been following the production of Return to Silent Hill from the second it was announced. From casting to filming to the eternal wait in getting the film distributed, I’ve been here, holding out the highest of hopes. After the disastrous sequel to Gans’s original, 2012’s Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, directed by M.J. Bassett, I figured anything must be better than what we were left with nearly 14 years ago, and with Gans returning to the franchise to adapt Silent Hill 2, things felt in capable hands.
Jeremy Irvine as James Sunderland in Christophe Gans’ RETURN TO SILENT HILL, a Cineverse release. Photo Credit: Aleksander Letic. Photo courtesy of Cineverse.
And yes! Return to Silent Hill is leagues better than Silent Hill: Revelation 3D. The problem is … I really should’ve aimed for a higher metric, because Return to Silent Hill is tragically still a mess.
Jeremy Irvine as James Sunderland in Christophe Gans’ RETURN TO SILENT HILL, a Cineverse release. Photo Credit: Aleksander Letic. Photo courtesy of Cineverse.
James Sutherland (Jeremy Irvine) is a painter mourning the loss of his partner, Mary Crane (Hannah Emily Anderson), drowning his grief in drink and isolation. His depressive stupor is violently upended when he receives what feels like an impossible letter from Mary beckoning him to return to Silent Hill, the mountain town where they first met and began their whirlwind romance. Upon returning to Silent Hill, James finds the town to be abandoned, save for a few disturbed characters, ravaged by fire and ash, and terrorized by terrifying creatures that transform the once peaceful town into a nightmare beyond imagination. James, with the help of stranger Maria (also played by Hannah Emily Anderson), who bears a striking resemblance to Mary despite her far more flamboyant style, must find Mary at the center of the town’s darkness and the force causing it before it’s too late.
Listen, I knew there would be pretty immense changes made to the narrative of Silent Hill 2 going into this film because there were significant changes to Silent Hill when Gans made it nearly 20 years ago and the changes made there were often more preferable to what the original game did. Splitting the characters of Dahlia and Christabella up, gender-swapping the lead character, incorporating other elements of Silent Hill from other games, I found it compelling and daring. I not only accepted them, I embraced them. At the center of it all, it felt like Christophe Gans (Brotherhood of the Wolf) and screenwriter Roger Avary (True Romance) understood and respected what Silent Hill was and the things about it that made it such a successful video game franchise.
With Return to Silent Hill, there are the expected changes to the narrative. The problem with that is so many of them are either completely unnecessary or are an active detriment to the narrative of Silent Hill 2. It was refreshing that the game’s focus was on human suffering and not about any sort of violent cult at the center of it, so why are we incorporating a cult back into this story? (This is not a spoiler as Cineverse has been actively referencing it in their promo materials.) Why are we adding a backstory to Mary that completely convolutes the central narrative to the film? I appreciate wanting to explore her character more before her death, but doing so in such a strange, stilted, and completely left-field way ruins the flow and general narrative structure of the film. Not to mention the complete bastardization of the characters of Laura (Evie Templeton, who also played Laura in the excellent Silent Hill 2 video game remake from 2024), Eddie (Pearse Egan), and Angela (also Hannah Emily Anderson, for a very stupid reason), which just leads me to believe much of the magic of Silent Hill resided in Roger Avary’s pen and that Gans, with co-writers Sandra Vo-Anh (Beauty and the Beast), and William Schneider (The Crow), did not possess the nuance, understanding, or justification for the narrative changes required to adapt a 10-15 hour video game into a 100-minute film, and that’s a shame.
“But Hunter, I never played Silent Hill 2 and I have no loyalty to it. Does that mean I’ll like the film?” Perhaps! Though it’s far from a successful effort even removing these narrative discrepancies. Silent Hill was shot in 2005 on a $50 million budget completely independently funded by the late Samuel Hadida’s Davis Films. The result was a lush, haunting film built on practical sets, effects, and creature work. Six years later, Silent Hill: Revelation 3D also got independent funding from Davis Films, but this time only to the extent of $20 million, and it showed. The cheesy 3D CGI effects, the lack of practical effects as a whole, and a director without understanding how to make the aesthetic of Silent Hill work, it was a disaster.
Now, 14 years later, Return to Silent Hill was allegedly made for a budget of $25 million, and, once again, it often shows. Not to the extent of Revelation, as this film luckily is releasing in 2D only, but the film relies so much on shoddy green screen work, cheap costume design (Maria’s wig might be one of the more egregious costuming decisions I’ve ever seen), and inconsistent cinematography from Pablo Rosso ([REC] series), replacing Oscar-nominated cinematographer Dan Laustsen (The Shape of Water; John Wick: Chapter 2), that it never truly feels like Gans has returned in any major capacity, as the individual elements from the individual artisans behind the film have changed, and not for the better. Even the editing from the same editor as the original film, Sébastien Prangère (Saloum), just feels strangely off.
Hannah Emily Anderson as Mary Crane in Christophe Gans’ RETURN TO SILENT HILL, a Cineverse release. Photo Credit: Aleksander Letic. Photo courtesy of Cineverse.
That’s where I find much of my discomfort with Return to Silent Hill. It all just feels … off. It doesn’t feel like Silent Hill, either gamewise or filmwise. The puzzle pieces are there, familiar set pieces are included, but there are also puzzle pieces from other puzzles being forced to fit within this one, but never do I feel like any of these pieces have actually been placed in the right spot. Even Revelation, in all its awfulness, had the general feel of the franchise down, even if it was the feel of the later, third-party games, while being cheaply made and misguided as hell. Here, while the dialogue is less offensively stilted, the effects more seamless (with more practical effects, though not entirely practical), and the direction less scattershot, it lacks the DNA that makes Silent Hill feel like Silent Hill, which I never expected from Gans’s return.
I’m not here to say everything Return to Silent Hill does is a complete mess, because it isn’t! The performances are solid, especially in comparison to the 1980s porn acting found in Revelation. Irvine (Paradise Hills), while perhaps a little younger/more alternative than I imagined James, does an admirable job bringing this deeply pathetic man to life. Anderson (Dark Phoenix), despite all the dumb plot elements she’s forced to reckon with as Mary/Maria/Angela, also delivers the goods in her respective roles. I wish we could’ve gotten to see more of Maria and Angela, but I was impressed with what she delivered. Templeton (Pinocchio (2022)) is also doing fine work as Laura, a role she seemingly was born to play as every person adapting Silent Hill 2 is chomping at the bit for her.
The film, despite it being made for half of the budget of the first film two decades ago, does often look stunning. It’s often cut by clunky, poorly staged, and obviously green-screened shots, but for every shot that Gans and Rosso get wrong, there is another one that they get very right. It’s an exceedingly dark film, but I never found it to be a detriment as much of this story is supposed to take place in complete darkness, illuminated by the light of a single flashlight. But when the blood-red sun of the Silent Hill otherworld illuminates the world, it’s a beautifully bleak look directly into the depths of hell. It’s the staging of characters in dialogue scenes and non-horror sequences where the film begins to look cheap, but when I remember the moments when the film does look good, it does bring me a small bit of joy.
The film’s musical score, composed by series regular Akira Yamaoka, utilizes a good deal of not only his original soundtrack to Silent Hill 2, but also music across the Silent Hill franchise spliced in with his own original writing to fit the film’s pacing, is excellent as expected. It definitely uses a lot more original orchestrations that feel a little more conventionally filmlike than the previous two films used, but there is a flow to it all that feels organic and satisfying. I had no doubt he would deliver, for he delivers even when the piece of Silent Hill work he contributes to is bad.
Hannah Emily Anderson as Angela Orosco in Christophe Gans’ RETURN TO SILENT HILL, a Cineverse release. Photo Credit: Aleksander Letic. Photo courtesy of Cineverse.
Unfortunately, as a whole, I was left with more questions than answers with Return to Silent Hill (Why is Silent Hill suddenly in the Swiss Alps? Why have we changed the contents and emotional gravity of Mary’s letter? Why is there a cult here? Why is Silent Hill a recently abandoned ghost town? Why is Maria’s wig from Party City? Does that mean there was a canon Party City within Silent Hill at one point? among many more), and, even more tragically, I was left with more dissatisfaction than satisfaction. As a mega-fan of the series as a whole, it admittedly broke my heart a little bit to realize about halfway through the film that it wasn’t doing much of anything for me beyond its visuals and lead performances. I never felt like I was watching a true continuation of the Silent Hill film franchise, let alone one directed by Gans. It was during this viewing that I came to realize that the magic of 2006’s Silent Hill came not just from Christophe Gans’s direction, but with the synergy found with screenwriter Roger Avary, cinematographer Dan Laustsen, production designer Carol Spier, and costume designer Wendy Partridge, the likes of which Gans doesn’t have access to with this installment. Nor does he have anywhere near the expert synergy with his new crew, and it shows quickly, which is an even bigger shame when you consider how precious people hold Silent Hill 2, easily the most beloved game in the franchise, and heralded as one of the greatest video games of all time. This film is not that.
L-R: Hannah Emily Anderson as Maria and Jeremy Irvine as James Sunderland in Christophe Gans’ RETURN TO SILENT HILL, a Cineverse release. Photo Credit: Aleksander Letic. Photo courtesy of Cineverse.
Maybe I’m being too harsh, maybe I’ll one day love this film, people can change. Right now, though, I wish the film would change itself into something as good as it had the potential of being.
Final score: 2 out of 5.
For more information, head to the official Cineverse Return to Silent Hill website.
Share this:
Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
Leave a Reply