Return to Silent Hill Review

Return to Silent Hill is Christophe Gans’s second attempt to adapt the famous game series for the screen. The film Silent Hill loosely drew on the first game and received restrained critical reception, while Silent Hill: Revelation is generally considered something best not mentioned in polite company. That said, it was made by different people. Now, however, it is time for a new release that follows the plot of Silent Hill 2. Although follows is probably far too generous a compliment for this film. It would be more accurate to say that it mocks it. I, the author of these lines, watched Return to Silent Hill so that you would not have to. Details below.

The main thing Silent Hill 2 was loved for was not its gameplay, which, let’s be honest, is rather clunky, and not even, in my opinion, the plot, which is about 60 percent hidden in notes. The main thing was the idea and the atmosphere.

The foggy limbo-city that brings together traumatized people and embodies their most deeply buried fears was impressive both at the time of the original game’s release and after the remake (Silent Hill 2 Remake). At the same time, the creators deliberately moved away from all kinds of cults, gods, and other large-scale mysticism, focusing the players’ attention on people. Completely ordinary, simple people who had been through a great deal.

This decision instantly turned the concept of Silent Hill into something deeply personal and grounded, something perceived through the prism of one’s own experience and even personal trauma. That is precisely why the very-plot-twist, essentially the only one in the entire game, produced such a powerful emotional effect. Gamers lived through the story together with the main character, James Sunderland, and in the finale came to an understanding of the full picture along with him.

At the same time, Silent Hill 2 allowed everyone to form their own opinion about what had happened. Some could condemn James, others could understand him, but absolutely everyone agreed that this man had it rough and was just as far from the label of villain as he was from the title of hero.

By the way, even the game’s developers themselves have been unable to replicate this powerful experience to this day. The recent Silent Hill f, about the problems of self-identification faced by a Japanese schoolgirl, did not even come close to the greatness of the second installment.

All of this is important to understand in order to realize just how poorly the creators of Return to Silent Hill, and Christophe Gans personally, understood the value of the game in the first place. The overall framework is roughly the same, but the emphases and details are somehow completely different.

To begin with, we are shown the moment James meets the girl Mary. At the same time, Sunderland’s image seems to have been changed by 180 degrees. From a quiet, calm, and level-headed man whose life outside Silent Hill was of no particular importance, James turns into a macho artist driving a stylish Ford Mustang and wearing signature expensive sunglasses. He is a partygoer and a pickup artist who immediately decides to rope Mary into his net.

It is amusing that a little later the film still tries to present one of the original’s main messages—that the girl is very dear to James, literally the love of his life—but in the film this is not felt at all. Moreover, the characters are not husband and wife, they are merely dating, which may seem like a minor detail but in fact significantly changes the perception.

After the opening scene, time suddenly skips ahead, and we see James already drunk in a bar. He picks a fight and discusses with a psychologist the need to forgive himself. In other words, right from the very beginning we are told that James has mental problems, he knows about them, and he is treating them. Then everything quickly tries to get back on the rails of the original, so at home James suddenly finds a letter from Mary and just as suddenly, dead drunk, drives to Silent Hill to meet her (never, under any circumstances, drive while intoxicated!).

Here, in my view, there are several problems at once. By the time the main events begin, we as viewers can already put two and two together and understand that something (clearly unpleasant) happened to Mary and that it had a strong impact on the hero. The screenplay strains to build intrigue that never actually materializes, because the story itself, unlike the game, drops a million hints about what happened. This is the first warning sign showing that the film is equally bad for fans and for newcomers, whom Gans apparently considers rather dim.

On top of that, James is drunk and aware of his own problems. It would be far more realistic to take the letter for an alcohol-induced hallucination and go to sleep. This runs counter to the game, where James arrives in the city with a clear mind, at least in his own view. He is absolutely certain that the letter is real, and the player has no reason to doubt it. The cinematic James has simply no reason to think that way.

What follows is a chain of events that feels more like an adaptation of scattered cutscenes unfolding over the course of the plot. The key point, however, lies in what has been changed compared to the game. First, Angela and Laura are now also echoes of Mary, exactly the same as Maria. Because of this script decision, the idea that Silent Hill draws in different traumatized people is completely lost. In the film, we are shown James’s personal limbo and, for some reason, Mary’s as well, even though she is, in fact, dead (that’s not a spoiler for you, is it? — ed. note) and therefore cannot influence the world.

Amusingly, having created an updated concept of the city, the screenplay immediately undermines it. Over the course of his journey, James encounters some incomprehensible homeless man and Eddie. Both appear for a single scene and then vanish without a trace, yet they point the viewer to the fact that the foggy city exists not only in Sunderland’s head. In the game, Eddie was a secondary character, but one just as traumatized as the protagonist. His demons ultimately destroyed him completely, which served as a contrast to James, who stoically held on until the very end.

A similar blunder occurs with the monsters. Those familiar with the game know that every creature James encountered reflected some aspect of his problems: sexual frustration, pain, guilt, and so on. One could even say this is one of the hallmarks of the entire series. Occasionally, other people’s nightmares would intrude, but extremely rarely and only at critical moments. Each prisoner of Silent Hill had their own monsters; other people simply could not see them.

Thus, Laura, who had no trauma or problems, could move calmly through the city in the game and did not see any creatures at all. The film spits on this rule. Eddie, James, the homeless man, and even Laura all see the boogeymen and react to them. On top of that, Mary’s creatures are added, which her boyfriend supposedly could not have known about.

Overall, Gans really went to town mocking Mary’s image. She is no longer simply wasting away from illness. Mary is now the daughter of the local cult’s leader; she is regularly fed poison, and on top of that the cult and her deceased father also used the girl in orgies. Upon learning all this, James abandons the love of his life and leaves Silent Hill. According to Gans, this is his grievous sin.

The very thing that cannot be spoiled (well, sort of, yeah… — editor-in-chief’s note) does eventually happen, but at Mary’s own request, after she has fallen ill from the poison, and it seems to carry little real weight. People who choose to become acquainted with the story only on the big screen will most likely leave the theater feeling utterly confused. Fans, on the other hand, will immediately sense the falseness and the shifted emphases.

The biggest plot inconsistency, in my view, is born right at the very beginning. The entire conflict between James and Mary lies in the fact that the man wants to leave the town and pull his beloved away from the cult’s regular rituals. However, she refuses, explaining that the cult is her family. But an attentive viewer will recall that when they first met, Mary was actually planning to leave. There is no reason why the couple ultimately stayed in Silent Hill or began living with Mary rather than in the apartment of a popular artist somewhere in a big city. And there are certainly no reasons to stay if even James himself insists on moving. If she was able to make such a decision at the start, what prevents her from doing it again?

While watching, there is a persistent feeling that the characters are not all that close and have been dating for, at most, a few months—roughly that level of intimacy. Although the season changes from summer to winter, Mary behaves toward James like a stranger. This, incidentally, is one of the reasons why the boyfriend-girlfriend format does not work in this story. The characters should have been married, which would have immediately eliminated such narrative maneuvers. In moments like these, one wants to say, "How convenient", and that phrase perfectly characterizes virtually all of the film’s events.

Maria, being Mary’s copy and the main irritant to James’s love, ultimately turns out to be useless to the story. It is impossible to understand from the film who she is or why she is needed, and the temptress disappears in a completely different way than in the original. If the viewer is unfamiliar with the source material, all of Maria’s actions seem superfluous and strange, lacking any underlying meaning.

As I have already written, Angela and Laura have also become different characters. The latter suffered especially, as Laura was transformed from a girl who had very specific goals and reasons for coming to Silent Hill into a kind of trial for James.

Here I would like to say a few words about the acting, which is simply not there. Or rather, only Laura delivers something at least remotely convincing. This is doubly amusing, given that the same actress portrayed Laura in the game’s remake and now plays a completely different character in a story that is familiar to her.

James himself and Mary/Maria spend the entire film wearing the same facial expression and a frozen emotion of mild surprise. One could argue here, since the original James was not exactly known for a wide range of emotions either, but there is still a difference. In the game, Sunderland communicates a lot with various characters, and it is precisely through dialogue that he is revealed as a person. Everything unfolds gradually, layer by layer. Most of these dialogues are absent in the film adaptation. Characters meet, exchange a few lines necessary to move the plot forward, and then go their separate ways. Once again: in the game, the characters exist to reveal James from different angles and to give players context about what kind of person he is. In the film, the characters exist simply because they were in the original, but there is very little for them to do.

However, all of this pales in comparison to the finale. To begin with, James does not uncover the core truth himself; instead, his own psychologist spells everything out for him, bluntly and without subtlety, so that the not-too-bright viewers, heaven forbid, do not leave the theater with questions. This happens somewhere near the start of the third act, and from that point on there is almost no reason to keep watching. The main intrigue simply vanishes.

One of the fundamental ideas of Silent Hill 2 was that the strongest monster, Pyramid Head, and indeed the city itself, did not want James dead. He was drawn into Silent Hill so that he could accept the truth and live through his grief, allowing himself to move on. That is precisely what the original good ending was about. In the film, everything is turned upside down, so the sole purpose of James’s stay in the city becomes the study of Mary’s life in order to understand that she had it hard. The final reveal does not work at all and turns the central twist from a point of culmination into some kind of afterword.

The director said that he chose the worst ending of the game as canon, but judging by the result, he may not have even known that other endings existed. Otherwise, it is impossible to explain why an entire story aimed at giving a traumatized person a new beginning ultimately ends with the bleakest possible outcome. This once again breaks the concept of the source material and gives the audience nothing in return.

A separate pain point is the visuals. You have to understand that the film both feels and looks very cheap. Yet, by some unfathomable means, in certain moments what is happening resembles an AI-generated cartoon. Even when there are live actors on screen. Whether this is a problem of failed lighting or color grading is a complicated question, but the fact remains. On top of that, «Return to Silent Hill» has very strange editing. From time to time, the characters simply shine a flashlight straight at the audience, effectively blocking the entire screen. This happens both in calm scenes and in action moments, and it lasts far longer than could reasonably be forgiven.

For some reason, all the puzzles were also cut from the plot. I understand that this is not something one wants to watch all the time; after all, this is an adaptation, not a filmed playthrough. However, they could have left at least one puzzle as a tribute. Instead, most of the runtime is just walking from point A to point B, without any flair.

Return to Silent Hill most closely resembles a retelling of the original game’s plot done by a neural network: everything seems to be there, but it does not engage, and half of it is distorted. Silent Hill 2 is a very complex game in terms of dramaturgy and psychological subtext. It cannot be treated like a standard evening action movie. But it did not turn into an action movie either—not a single memorable scene. Alas, Christophe Gans never truly understood what makes the game series special. The adaptation sends the viewer back to the days of the Max Payne movie and other video game films, when no one particularly cared about the essence, preferring to film something inspired by it. Most likely, Mr. Gans will not return to video games again. And good riddance.