Return to Silent Hill Movie Review

This is simply a spoiler-free reappraisal of Return to Silent Hill, which opens successful theaters connected January 23, 2026.

Return to Silent Hill doesn’t needfully person the highest barroom to wide arsenic it ambles its mode to theaters successful this wintertime lull period. Hollywood whitethorn person yet figured retired however to bash a due video crippled adaptation connected the streaming broadside of things, but decent video crippled movies are inactive beauteous fewer and acold between. And portion manager Cristophe Gans’ 2006 Silent Hill movie was a decent effort, the follow-up, 2012’s Gans-less Silent Hill: Revelation, is arsenic dreadful arsenic they come. All Return to Silent Hill has to bash is not beryllium the worst introduction successful the series. And it manages that, if not a large woody else.

While the erstwhile 2 films borrowed reasonably liberally from the archetypal and 3rd Silent Hill games, neither is what could beryllium considered a nonstop adaptation. Return to Silent Hill, by comparison, is fundamentally Silent Hill 2: The Movie. It doesn’t truly question to proceed the mythology established successful the erstwhile films, but alternatively presents a standalone communicative acceptable successful the spooky, ash-strewn streets of Silent Hill.

As successful 2001’s Silent Hill 2 and its 2024 remake, Return to Silent Hill follows James Sunderland (Jeremy Irvine), a seemingly innocuous everyman mourning the decease of his woman Mary (Hannah Emily Anderson). When James receives a missive from Mary urging him to instrumentality to their “special place,” it’s disconnected to Silent Hill and its cavalcade of shambling horrors.

What follows is simply a condensed mentation of the game’s storyline. That’s surely a proven look astatine this point, but again, Return to Silent Hill’s astir glaring flaw is that it doesn’t bash thing peculiarly caller oregon breathtaking with that formula. Given the sheer graphical fidelity of the Silent Hill 2 Remake, the imaginable of seeing the game’s events play retired successful live-action simply isn’t enough. Heck, the crippled is by acold the better-looking of the two. Return to Silent Hill’s low-budget trappings uncover themselves successful the galore shots of Irvine and others lasting against evident green-screen backdrops. The carnal designs are inactive awesome successful immoderate medium, but the remake feels much visually refined and cohesive overall.

Nor are the performances up to the modular of the remake. Irvine is mostly good arsenic James, but the movie doesn’t ever springiness him overmuch to bash beyond nonstop him careening down eerie hallways, screaming 1 quality oregon another’s name. Only towards the extremity does James acquisition much of a tangible affectional arc. And portion it’s amusive seeing Evie Templeton reprise her relation arsenic Laura from the crippled remake, she’s hardly successful the movie agelong capable to permission overmuch of an impression. That goes for astir of the supporting characters, really. In the effort to trim down a lengthy crippled communicative to a choky 100-minute film, these characters person been reduced to shells that look lone agelong capable to propulsion the communicative forward. “Underdeveloped” hardly scratches the aboveground here.

Return to Silent Hill tin consciousness amazingly aimless contempt its humble runtime. With nary of the obtuse puzzle-solving and small of the combat that defines the games, the movie settles for pursuing James arsenic helium runs terrified from 1 acquainted landmark to the adjacent and experiences flashbacks to his beingness with Mary. In ditching the interactive element, the communicative loses overmuch of its power. The monsters inactive look cool, but they and the town’s Otherworld magnitude don’t truly animate the aforesaid consciousness of dread.

On the taxable of those flashbacks, that’s the 1 country wherever Gans and co-screenwriters Sandra Vo-Anh and Will Schneider effort to region Return to Silent Hill from its integer root material. Here we spot the emergence and autumn of James and Mary’s romance, a communicative that proves acold much analyzable than the straightforward mentation the crippled provides. But, successful this case, much analyzable doesn’t adjacent better. While I tin admit the attempts to some crook James into a much morally ambiguous fig and greatly soma retired Mary, the added mythology successful these scenes feels campy and unnecessary. Annoyingly, the flashbacks and the characters they present are fundamentally abandoned by the extremity of the film, leaving maine to wonderment wherefore they were introduced successful the archetypal place.

Worse still, the flashbacks extremity up moving against the movie by fundamentally changing a captious constituent of James and Mary’s backstory. I fishy a batch of fans volition instrumentality umbrage astatine however a large uncover is handled, some due to the fact that of however it alters their narration and renders overmuch of the imagery and symbolism of the movie nonsensical.

Again, it’s not each atrocious here. Even successful this diminished state, the movie retains capable of the ocular and aural entreaty of the root worldly to occasionally basal out. Pyramid Head and those nurses are damned chill successful immoderate medium. And having bid composer Akira Yamaoka connected committee surely doesn’t wounded successful that area. This whitethorn beryllium a profoundly inferior mentation of the game, but an inferior instrumentality connected 1 of the champion fearfulness games ever released inactive carries immoderate weight.