Based on the highly influential PlayStation 2 hit Silent Hill 2 (2001), this is a “return” to Silent Hill in more ways than one. It is the return of Silent Hill to the big screen, not to mention Silent Hill (2006) director Christophe Gans 20 years later, and a triumphant return for the franchise following the success of Silent Hill 2 (2025) remake and Silent Hill f (2025) for PS5. Sadly, the same cannot be said of the film franchise as while Return to Silent Hill should be a celebrated part of the resurgence of one of the most influential survival horror franchises of all-time, it seems the fog has settled over the cinematic branch of the franchise and won’t be lifting anytime soon.
Our place. Our town. Our love. It was here. It was everywhere. And now, they keep telling me to let go, to move on. But how could I ever do that when you’re calling me?
Silent Hill 2, set in the mysterious foggy resort town of Silent Hill, introduced us to James Sunderland back in 2001, a man drawn to the town after receiving a letter from his deceased wife, prompting the possibility of meeting her at their “special place”. Exploring the abandoned town, we meet the troubled and suicidal Angela searching for her mother; a bullied, overweight and paranoid Eddie with violent tendencies; Laura, a mischievous but innocent young girl who knew Mary; and a mysterious woman, Maria, who bares an uncanny resemblance to James’ late wife, Mary. It is important to recognise that key aspects of the game design, including monsters and themes, all crucially represent aspects of James’ damaged psyche. It’s a story of the trauma of loss, repression, desire, pain and guilt that builds to a climactic revelation yet remains cryptic, akin to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks or Stanisław Lem’s Solaris, demanding to be replayed and reinterpreted. Where every strange dialogue delivery, ambiguous environmental story telling and surreal atmospheric choice speaks to the David Lynch and Francis Bacon inspiration that set the Silent Hill games apart from its horror contemporaries, building story and thematic elements from Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, after watching Return to Silent Hill, it is all the more bewildering how little of the material was regarded by its writers at all.
The basic premise that James returns to Silent Hill to investigate Mary’s whereabouts is about as much as it has in common. Where the relatively straight-forward, basic premise of Silent Hill 2 is bolstered with introspective thematic depth and surreal atmosphere, Return manages to generate an utterly in-cohesive story that has no flow – indeed the horrific editing of poorly stitched together sequences (it’s a stretch to call them “scenes”) with badly utilised attempts to represent “video game” logic that doesn’t hold up in cinema, serve to show that there are no organic transitions present to help create a comprehensible story. Namely, flashback sequences are utilised to explain every facet of the story where its cryptic nature kept the original enigmatically interesting to the end. Key support characters and awkward attempts to represent gameplay puzzle mechanics are similarly inorganic and ultimately stunt the overall flow. All this frankly heightens the soulless, cheap dime store video game movie knock-off that meanders throughout this sordid experience, appearing more like a low-budget amateur fan film – and not even a particularly good one, either.
Mary’s not dead. Not to me. And you’re not real. You’re just in my way.
Memories, dreams and present moments are indistinguishable, not in a Lynchian dream logic way but in a frustrating way that serves little to no purpose, where characters are introduced who bare little-to-no resemblance to the roles they play in the game. Maria barely looks like Mary here, a vital part of the original story; she is reverted to girlfriend status not wife; and for unfathomable reasons has an overly complicated background with Silent Hill cults (more tied to Gans’ first Silent Hill than the game), in a Rosemary’s Baby riff that would make Ira Levin spit acid. However the worst offender is by far the protagonist himself: James Sunderland. In the games, James was a neutrally written everyman character, if dissociative and struggling with a troubling guilt complex bent to a desire for punishment, otherwise designed for players to reflect themselves into the game. Here James has been cast as a dashing hero with a tortured artist, alcoholic background that ruins the mystery of the plot, with flashbacks that reveal far too much yet evoke little sense or interest. There is no mystery or intrigue and the added “character depth” contradicts the more compelling dissociative despondency of the original, resulting from his wife’s death.
Other characters are throwaways – Eddie for instance, where no attempt was made to bring his most iconic scenes to screen. None of the themes of the game are represented well – either being misunderstood or not even remotely present, as if no-one actually played let alone Googled the source material. The iconic monsters of Silent Hill 2 who fundamentally served a role in reflecting James’ psyche are similarly neutered: notably Pyramid Head (or “Red Pyramid Thing”), a stand-in for guilt and punishment appears in a single scene skulking around as little more than a random monster who does literally nothing, or the Abstract Daddy who ties into Angela’s abuse background, but becomes ironically abstract in the chaotic slush that was the latter portion of the film. There is no nuance or interest in themes deeper than filling the screen with “cool looking monsters”. Sure, Silent Hill (2006) abused Pyramid Head as a franchise mascot with little regard to its thematic relevance, but at least it had presence and purpose in the context of the film.
James, so much time has passed. I know that. But I’m asking – I’m begging you to please com eback. To our place. Something’s happened. Please, James. I need you. Love, Mary
As an adaptation it is hard to go into Return to Silent Hill without being bias, without drawing parallels to the original game. But even without Silent Hill 2 to compare it to, it is simply poorly written. While it would at least be nice to say it looks good, it even struggles visually, albeit with a few short sequences towards the beginning that attempt to reproduce early moments from the game. Where Christophe Gans’ Silent Hill featured practical effects, contortionists and 35mm film that helped blend CG animation into the physical world more seamlessly, Return to Silent Hill takes the decision to largely use green screens and digital film which makes every CG and green screen backdrop standout all the more, certainly for the worse. Christophe Gans’ Silent Hill is now 20 years old and, while questionable as a representation of “Silent Hill”, manages to hold up as a film far better.
Simply put, Return to Silent Hill is inconceivably bad. It manages to be incompetent as a story, incompetent as an interpretation of a beloved video game and incompetent as a piece of film making. Without any doubt, Return to Silent Hill succeeds at being the single worst video game movie of all-time – a bar so low it’s barely worth thinking about at the best of times – and certainly one of the most appalling films I have had the displeasure of sitting through. This isn’t just a shocking “adaptation” of one of the most iconic psychological survival horror games of all-time, but a film so appalling it’s hard not to feel irked and frustrated that Konami gave Gans the go-head to make it – this coming from a company who spent the better part of the last decade cashing in their beloved franchises for themed, cash-grabbing pachinko games.
