At long last, a third cinematic take on the Silent Hill video game series has come to fruition. This time around, returning director Christophe Gans (2006’s excellent Silent Hill) has spent two decades crafting a love letter to the uncontested fan favorite: Silent Hill 2. Every major character in that game features at least once in Return to Silent Hill, with most of their arcs carrying over into the script at large. Not to mention some sequences exactly emulate cutscenes, whilst others playfully recreate nearly shot-for-shot the staging. There can be no denying that this feature is the most faithful Silent Hill adaptation to date. Does that alone make it the best? For those always wishing to see the iconic story behind Silent Hill 2 get a proper cinematic treatment, Return to Silent Hill nails the unmistakable dread and trauma-driven twists and turns. A freaky visual feast for the senses, Return to Silent Hill stylishly underlines the timelessness of one of the greatest games ever made.
Fanatics will already know the general gist of Silent Hill. A central hero or heroine, no doubt riddled with past troubles, ends up trapped within the limits of a sleepy town plagued by twisted creatures. Return to Silent Hill brings broody James Sunderland (Jeremy Irvine, The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death, War Horse) into the gray as he must confront the ghosts of his past. James once lived in Silent Hill with his love, Mary (Hannah Emily Anderson, Jigsaw, Smoke), and now a mysterious letter signed by her beckons him back. James starts the film as a broken man, unable to escape his drunken rock bottom. Not even his therapist can help. Mary’s letter represents a glimmer of hope, so James must—you guessed it—return to Silent Hill.
From the second James pulls over at the gas station nearby in the middle of a thunderstorm, Gans fully embraces the video game vibes. These aren’t just easter eggs, but in some cases, shot-for-shot recreations of cutscenes, outfits, and set dressing. Moths and mannequins and Lying Figures, oh my! Silent Hill itself though is the film’s crowning achievement. Overhead shots emphasize the town’s vast, suffocating scale. Whispers of ash fill the air, storefronts are abandoned, towering gates are draped in tattered curtains. Gans takes us on a gripping thrill ride through major locations, including Woodside Apartments, Brookhaven Hospital, Toluca Lake, and the impactful Lakeview Hotel. Each have distinct enough flavor to change up the approach, particularly when the “Otherworld” gets triggered. The only semi-major loss from a locale standpoint would probably be Toluca Prison, but that does not seem necessary to the story that creatives decided to tell.
When James discovers a radio, the static noises it makes help to signal creeping dread as it approaches. So far, so Silent Hill. Each grotesque monstrosity that makes an appearance has been tied into the fractured nature of James’ past. As James inches closer on his hunt for Mary, each freaky encounter is scarier than the last. Some of these figures we have seen depicted onscreen before in either Silent Hill or Silent Hill: Revelations 3D—the nurses and Pyramid Head have both been utilized despite being outside the context of their original creation. Here, “Red Pyramid” looks exactly as he should, dragging his blade through hallways and looking generally ominous. The nurses have been ever-so-slightly reimagined with crumbling faces and bodies that recall statues in a state of decay. Bosses such as Flesh Lip and Abstract Daddy are impactful precisely due to their context within the game. Screenwriters Gans, William Josef Schneider, and Sandra Vo-Anh still manage to find a way to make these monsters pop onscreen in a way that stays true to their original intent.
Tertiary characters help to flesh out the world a bit, although they notably do not receive nearly as much texture as their video game counterparts. Eddie (Pearse Egan, In From the Side) revels in the town’s emptiness. Angela (also Hannah Emily Anderson) fleets in and out in states of depression, maintaining the complexities found on the page despite a lesser screentime. Maria, a mysterious blonde body double of Mary, becomes a companion to James as he traverses this strange new version of the town he once called home. The little girl Laura (Evie Templeton, Wednesday Season 2) leaves the biggest mark, as her unsettling innocence follows James from place to place. Templeton played this character before in Bloober Team’s recent Silent Hill 2 remake, and appears to know Laura inside and out. Laura’s sunken eyes and childlike demeanor make her instantly memorable. As Sunderland, Irvine manages to make a deeply insular anti-hero into more of an outward badass. The core of James remains intact, though the characterization evolves further as we head towards a gripping climax.
Fans somehow expecting a direct line-by-line interpretation of the source material may walk away disappointed. There have already been angry rants about simply the look of the characters and the most miniscule of tweaks just from the time the very first production stills were released. Christophe Gans understands what makes this world tick, and furthermore, nails the exact feeling of playing a video game within the framework of an exciting horror thriller. Akira Yamaoka—composer of various projects including Silent Hill 2, 3, 4, f, and both previous films—returns with an ambient, altogether freaky score that perfectly injects atmospheric tension to the proceedings. Even when the narrative strays slightly from what we know and love, Gans, Yamaoka, and an excellent cast keep Return to Silent Hill tethered to survival horror greatness.
Bring your radio for a Return to Silent Hill, creeping exclusively into theaters on Friday, January 23rd.
