Directed By Christophe Gans

Starring – Jeremy Irvine, Hannah Emily Anderson, Robert Strange

The Plot – When a man (Irvine) receives a mysterious letter from his lost love (Anderson), he is drawn to Silent Hill, a once familiar town now consumed by darkness.

Rated R for bloody violent content, adult language and brief drug use.

RETURN TO SILENT HILL Trailer 4K (2026) | Jeremy Irvine, Hannah Emily Anderson | Horror

POSITIVES

If the third film in the Silent Hill universe has any chance at connecting with an adoring audience, it will reside in the passionate fanbase of its games, who above all else seek out these movies as a means of escapism to indulge in the familiar iconography of its games, and at least in that individualized aspect the movie is A rousing success, with everything from costume designs to make-up, to even Akira Yamaoka’s score triggering nostalgic warmth that brings so many of the games’ moments and characters to life. While the context and faithfulness of its factuality is severely lacking, it’s clear that Gans and his production have an eye for detail, and considering he’s the very same director who helmed the 2004 original movie, the movie’s title has a dual meaning for his 20-year homecoming, allowing him and the audience ample opportunity to sample some of the game’s most memorable moments. On the subject of Yamaoka’s score, there are lots of faithful instrumental callbacks to “Silent Hill 2” in particular, but with this uncomfortably cool reversed rendering that mirrors the contorted realities of this tragic underworld, and while the themes are distorted to conjure something refreshingly interpretable to the scenes that they accompany, there’s still enough familiarity in the depths of the piano-dominated melodies that capture that essence of this world, where nearly everything else fails, proving some semblance of pulse to the movie’s integrity that serves as the biggest measurement to Gans passion for this cherished property.

NEGATIVES

After the monumental disappointment that was “Silent Hill: Revelations”, it seemed the franchise died a brutal death that suspended any semblance of hope for the future of this adaptive series, and while that predecessor is still every bit as awful as it was when it hit theaters in 2012, “Return to Silent Hill” marks a remarkably appalling new low for the franchise that can’t even attempt to approach the material at a factually accurate level, leading to what is easily the weakest installment of this disconnected trilogy of unremarkable films. Beginning with the laughably bad deviations from the screenplay by Gans and his two co-writers, Sandra Vo-Anh and Will Schneider, the film totally undervalues its primary romance between James and Mary, in ways that totally underscore the emotionality of what a town like Silent Hill metaphorically represents, not only with lukewarm chemistry between Irvine and Anderson that sells these shared scenes with a vapidness of love and sentimentality between them, but also the lack of commitment paid to the backstory of their emerging love, with an overall structure playing out simultaneously alongside the events transpiring in real time that confuses and contorts what should feel effortlessly digestible to the audience. It certainly doesn’t help that the clumsiness of the editing continuously stumbles over the sequencing, in ways that frequently made me question which arc the movie was conjuring, at any given moment, but it’s even more of an uphill climb when the movie asks us to invest in a couple that we not only know so little about during the movie’s initial set-up, but also one that differs so unnecessarily from the married couple who they mirror from the game, making James’ quest for reunion feel like the obsessive efforts of a determined stalker, instead of the unresolved grief of suffering husband. Because the 97-minute runtime allows so little time from proper development, with a breakneck pacing to the storytelling that can’t remain patient for long enough to let real raw emotion wash over the characters and their conflicts, it requires the exposition of the script to work overtime towards conveying exposition to the audience, an aspect that hinders the film’s prominence in more ways than one. This doubling down with the annoyances are frequently unloaded within the movie’s dialogue, but particularly the overhead narration from James that makes every flashback sequence with Mary feel like a cologne commercial, where pretentiousness meets unsubtlety in ways that spoon-feed audiences interpretive emotions long before the integrity of the scene ever has a chance to. Speaking of spoon-feeding, the script feels a bit confused at just which demographic that it is marketing this movie towards, approaching documented characterization from the games with an air of mystery that never feels surprising or even momentarily impactful to experienced gamers, but also not remotely compelling to those unfamiliar with this story’s history, on account of the movie being stripped down towards feeling like another generic supernatural thriller. Describing this movie in that way feels like a cinematic sin, as the movie lacks any semblance of thrills or even palpable frights, on account of the lack of suspense and speculation that adorns Gans questionable direction with individualized set pieces, and though the thickness of dire helplessness should come across naturally in a Silent Hill movie, especially one with so much documented proof in the proverbial pudding from the games, it never feels like we’re watching a movie from the same universe as those previous films, or even one that feels like a living, breathing place within the setting, courtesy of the single biggest reliance upon artificial filmmaking that I have truly ever seen in a movie. From the opening frame of either moments that persist from Silent Hill or even the real world, it’s clear that the production spared a lot of cents to keep the budget at bay, particularly in the computer-generated backdrops that omit any semblance of tangibility or intricacy to the set design, and instead leave it feeling glaringly evident that James is continuously walking a studio without actually interacting with anything around him. The single biggest selling point to a Silent Hill adaptation, at least for me, is how each director manifests their distinct vision for how they view such an iconic setting, and considering Gans is the very same director who helmed such a masterfully influential touch over the production values of the 2005 original installment, it’s baffling to see how clumsily he dropped the ball this time around. Fakeness can easily be absorbed by the choices of off-screen influence that permeate within the presentation, but everything from the framing maximizing the scope of cheap transparency to the unnatural lighting inspiring a glossiness to the imagery, frequently disturbed the faithfulness of my investment that suspends doubt with what I’m seeing, in turn magnifying the sparsity of artificial detail in hilarious things like a trash can or a streetlight, which could’ve produced some meaningful dimensions to off-set the movie’s stilted atmosphere, but instead succumb to an uninspiring blandness that condemn its appeal from the opening shot. Finally, even the performances from this intimately assembled ensemble lack the initiative to leave it all out on the field, especially Jeremy Irvine’s conflicted turn as James, to which the entirety of the movie’s focus resides. Not only is Jeremy such a polarizing parallel from his gaming counterpart, in appearance and expressive demeanor, but also crucially flat in the much-needed emotionality that banally banishes from the story’s most meaningful moments, which at the very least should overwhelm him with inescapable dread and grief, but instead leave him looking confused in the most confounding ways to A scene’s integrity. Not all of the blame falls on Irvine, as his coldly clammy chemistry with Hannah Emily Anderson fails to ignite the candle of affection between them, but considering he’s the primary protagonist, and one enacting such a meaningfully memorable character to what is arguably the greatest game in the franchise, it never rises to the occasion in ways that attain empathy or earnestness, proving that a tree falling in a desolate landscape does not, in fact, make a sound.

OVERALL
“Return to Silent Hill” is an artificially lifeless and lumbering foray back into the fog of gaming’s most iconic isolated setting, and one that sees writer and director Christophe Gans returning to the scene of his divisive spectacle, twenty years later. While that predecessor thrived on a thick atmosphere and lived-in element of production, this unconnected successor contends with greenscreen oversaturation and baffling character deviations that inevitably alienate the foundation of its passionate gaming audience, in turn leveling preconceived expectations with an uninspiring execution so arrestingly ghastly that it feels like a student film playing out on a silver screen stage

My Grade: 2.2 or F