Return to Silent Hill

When it takes over thirty minutes for a film to go anywhere even remotely interesting, for my money, something is wrong. "Return to Silent Hill" lacks both pace and scares; in short, I found it boring. It's not the actors' fault; they hand in decent performances. Its story, in my opinion, needed to be reworked to make it more engaging and exciting. In summary, acting is fine, but I found the story lackadaisical and dull. Can't recommend this one.

Ok, so I don’t remember going to “Silent Hill” first time around (in 2006), but after this I am certain I will never go again. At least Christopher Gans had enough wits about him to cast someone easy on the eye in the lead, but even the ashen-looking Jeremy Irvine couldn’t breathe any life into this. He’s “James” who meets up with “Mary” (Hannah Emily Anderson) after he managed to hit her luggage with his car. Thereafter they flirt, court, move in together, split up - but as far as this plot is concerned, in no coherent order and only delivered to us by way of flashback. It’s only as he returns to find her again he discovers the town is now the victim of what looks like a nearby meteor strike and the place devoid of all but some curious humanoid creatures that definitely mean him harm. Can he put the pieces of this emotionally confused jigsaw together? Do we care? If this were just to have been a monster film with Irvine in a semi-psychotic fight for survival, then perhaps it might have worked better. It isn’t. The timelines are all over the place; characters appear and the disappear seemingly quite randomly and the psychological impact of the story is so compromised as to render this little better than a mess that looks every inch an incremental video game put onto a big screen. Some of the creativity behind the visual effects is to be commended but the story is completely lacking in either characterisation or substance. It will kill some time on the telly in October, maybe, but otherwise this has little to recommend it to anyone.

I watched original Silent Hill and it was a great movie. I have also played Silent Hill 2 which was a great game as well in its genre and now I watched this movie too. Well, what can I say about this movie... One thing they did well is resemblance to the game. It looks very similar and they did good job mimicking it, but they also made some story changes in movie, however the problem with this movie is that, when you're playing a game, you're into action and it's scary and it's interesting, but when you watch it like a movie, it's boring, because you're not action and for the movie to be great, it needs interesting story and that's why this movie didn't turn out great. It felt cheap to be honest. I don't know what exactly gave me this feeling, but that's how I felt about it. Maybe CGI, maybe lack of cast (it was just a few actors in total involved in this movie). So, I'm giving this movie 5/10, which means isn't not bad, but it's not good either, it's somewhere in between.

My quick rating - 4.9/10. Another Bloody Disgusting logo to begin with, so you never quite know what you're going to get. Sometimes that logo means "grab the popcorn," and other times it means "grab your phone". Return to Silent Hill lands somewhere in between. His disjointed memories and guilt bring painter James Sunderland (Jeremy Irvine) to Room 318 after a handwritten letter from his lost love, Mary Crane (Hannah Emily Anderson) is slid under his door. Seeking closure, he heads to their special place in Silent Hill, now a desolate shell of a town that apparently no real estate agent dared visit in about twenty years. The more James searches for Mary, the more his grief warps the world into a psychological horror show, complete with shifting dimensions and monsters. The more James seeks his lost love, the more it seems to be a setup. Visually, the film gets a lot right. The grim, darker contrasts of Silent Hill work nicely against the more colorful flashbacks, and the production design leans heavily into the series’ signature oppressive atmosphere. The backgrounds often look downright trippy, and the creatures are genuinely unsettling in that classic Silent Hill way, like someone turned therapy notes into practical effects. I recently fired up Silent Hill 2 in VR and could immediately tell this follows the same story path, though I only played briefly, so I won’t be diving into the endless debate about what the film changed or left out. I’m sure the hardcore fans are already handling that across the internet with surgical precision. Laura, played by Evie Templeton, is easily the standout. She is wonderfully creepy and unpredictable, and injects some much-needed personality into a film where most of the characters feel like background NPCs waiting for their dialogue prompt. That isn't a knock on Anderson at all, since she has her hands full with multiple characters in this flick and juggles them quite well. Oddly enough, this reminded me more of Silent Hill: Revelation than the original Silent Hill film. It never wraps up a complete movie, and the plot often feels paper-thin despite some heavy psychological themes. The atmosphere and scenery do most of the hard work, while the story struggles to find a direction. You can see where the film wants to explore trauma and guilt, but the pieces never fit together into a complete picture. Director Christophe Gans returns after gracing us with the first Silent Hill, but this time he doesn’t quite recapture the same magic. Visually, he’s still on target, but the storytelling feels incomplete, like a puzzle missing just enough pieces to be tossed in the trash. Then again, if you’ve ever played a Silent Hill game or watched the previous films, this may all feel strangely familiar. Great mood, deliberate pacing, and a journey that never quite clarifies its destination. It isn’t awful. Just another haunting trip through Silent Hill that looks the part but never fully finds its soul.

For a video game movie this is the only one I can truly say is 99% accurate. Out of ALL of them, this is just so spot on it's... Scary. The whole 'cult' aspect was just horrid, but, as as with any movie that has to do with a video game or a book, they took certain liberties. Over all, this was a great movie, even without having played the game. One could watch this as a stand alone movie or a fan of the game. I did muse as to if the movie might have as many endings as the game did, but, alas it did not. Any way you slice it, a movie well done.

Visually stunning but empty The visual design of this movie is just stunning, but it is as if the entire creative effort went into making this place look creepy, rather than make it actually creepy. The tension is not even cool, let alone chilling, the characters are lack-luster and the story is bland. I am sure there is more to this movie that might appeal to those who played the games, but as a movie-going experience it is simply not very good.