Return to Silent Hill
Ever notice how some towns just won’t let you go? Not the places you live, but the ones you visit in stories. They stick in your head like a bad dream you can’t shake. Silent Hill is one of those places. Started as pixels and polygons back in ’99 on the PlayStation, a foggy, cursed little town in Maine that redefined what a horror game could be. It wasn’t just about monsters; it was about the monsters inside you. The guilt, the grief. The kind of stuff that follows you home and sits in your dark living room at 3 AM.
Then came the movies. Christophe Gans brought that fog to life in 2006. He actually wanted to adapt the second game, Silent Hill 2, right from the jump. The one about James Sunderland and his lost love, Mary. But he figured, back then, audiences might not get it. Too psychological, not enough jump scares. So he started with the story of the first game instead.
Made a film that, love it or hate it, had a look. A specific, oppressive atmosphere. It did well enough that the producers wanted a sequel, fast. They dreamed of turning it into another Resident Evil, all action and franchise potential. Gans said no thanks and walked away. What followed in 2012, Silent Hill: Revelation, was made without him. Let’s just say it didn’t capture the magic.
So for twenty years, that original idea, adapting Silent Hill 2, just sat there. Lurking. A piece of unfinished business for Gans and a holy grail for fans. The game itself is a landmark. A story set in the 1980s about a man confronting the horrifying truth of his own guilt. It stood apart from the cult mythology of the other games, a purely personal nightmare. And now, in 2026, Gans has finally returned. Return to Silent Hill is pitched as both the third film and a series reboot, going straight back to that original dream project. Jeremy Irvine is James, Hannah Emily Anderson is Mary (and others), and the town is waiting.
But here’s the thing about returning to a place after two decades. Nothing stays the same. Not the town, not the filmmaker, not the audience. Is this a homecoming or a haunting? A faithful pilgrimage back to the source material or a new path through the fog? That’s the journey this review sets out on. To walk those ashen streets again, see what’s changed, what’s stayed buried, and figure out if some letters are better left unopened.
Return to Silent Hill Review: Christophe Gans’ Video Game Misfire is 2026’s Biggest Flop
A Horror Movie Review by Hope Madden
When I used to pick my son up from his dorm, invariably there was a video game on whether anyone was playing or not. Mainly it was badly articulated characters delivering stilted, unrealistic but wildly dramatic dialog on an endless loop because, with no one playing, there was no action.
I could also be describing Christophe Gans’s twenty-years-in-the-making sequel, Return to Silent Hill.
I did not care for the filmmaker’s 2006 Silent Hill, a film that followed a mother into a supernatural town to save her adopted daughter. The sequel, also based on the incredibly popular video game of the same name, follows a distraught man (James Sunderland) who returns to a supernatural town to save his girlfriend (Hannah Emily Anderson).
Gans’s original at least boasted Radha Mitchell, who can, in fact, act. Gans didn’t give her much opportunity, but she tried. Do not look for that here. Though it doesn’t seem that acting is what Gans is after. He lights and frames actors specifically to make them seem less fleshy, less human. Their movement is stiff and unnatural, their dialog stilted and dumb. You truly feel like you’re watching a video game you’re not playing. Nobody’s playing.
You would hope that in the 20 years between projects, the creature design would have improved. Not the case. You rarely get a good eyeball on any of the creatures—and the video game does have a slew of creepy beasties to choose from—and when you do see them, they’re bland and they do nothing.
Because nothing happens in this movie. The entire film feels like being trapped in the between action set ups of a video game that nobody is playing. Nothing happens. There is no action.
Somebody thought the storyline, sans shootouts, without monster carnage, just the storyline of a video game was interesting enough to make a movie out of. They were incorrect.
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