Back to Silent Hill Review – Video Game Horror Series Generates Another Average Film | Horror movies

TThat’s a remarkable, perhaps even poetic, loyalty in a filmmaker returning to an unpromising, barely existing film franchise, 20 years after his first success was a minor hit. The horror film Silent Hill, based on the video game of the same name, has gained a cult following over the decades since its 2006 release, but it’s not a cult classic or beloved franchise, with only one unseen sequel in 2012 bearing its name — until now. Return to Silent Hill brings back the director of the first film, Christopher Ganz, for a new story set in the same ash-filled ghost town, this one inspired by the video game Silent Hill 2. Characters in these films tend to wander into a place that’s clearly haunted or cursed, refuse to leave even after it becomes clear they should, and don’t decide to escape until it’s too late. Maybe Gans can relate.

Or maybe he’s the only man for the job because no one else will take it. This could almost describe James (Jeremy Irvine), the down-on-his-luck protagonist of Return to Silent Hill. After a chance meeting with Mary (Hannah Emily Anderson) in a traffic accident that unconvincingly foils her attempt to leave home, the two fall in love, and after a while James moves to Mary’s exotic town; As a painter, he can go anywhere (although if there’s a reason Mary can’t leave, since she’s already ready to hop on the bus when they meet, I’ve missed it). Although the film skips what makes them instantly compatible, James is in on the act; Someone has to be.

Aside from their encounter, most of James and Mary’s relationship is depicted in flashback throughout the film, initially giving it some sinister romantic intrigue that the first film lacked. We know, based on early scenes set after their first meeting, that at some point Mary and James will be separated, sending him into a state of desperate agony. In the midst of this confusion, he receives a mysterious message that takes him back to the town of Silent Hill, indicating that Mary is there somewhere. When he reaches the entry way and finds a dead-end tunnel, James is undaunted and takes off on a footpath. When he arrives at the city and finds it barely populated and covered in ash, he cannot be dissuaded from searching. When a filthy, sore-covered man takes a break from vomiting into a rusty toilet to tell James that the city is “one big cemetery,” our hero shrugs his shoulders and bravely steps forward.

It turns out that making a horror film where the hero is more curious (or oblivious) than afraid is a difficult proposition. James’ stubborn stumbling is supposed to indicate his obsessive devotion to Mary — though you’d think someone fixated on his ex-wife would realize when he meets a mysterious woman (Anderson again) who looks exactly like her, only with blond hair. (Mary has blonde hair, too.) However, for a time, the parallel trajectories of the past, in which James feels increasingly uncomfortable with Mary’s strange “family,” and the present, in which he is haunted by figurative and literal demons, give Return to Silent Hill a stronger sense of purpose and mystery than it really deserves. However, as the film continues, the film increasingly consists of James wandering through visually distinct landscapes and encountering various strange sights.

In other words, 20 years later, Gans still can’t figure out how to escape the open-ended constraints of the game, or even give it forward momentum to a game with a mission. There are certainly some “cinematic” images here, like the horde of disgusting creatures that look like a cross between shaved mice and alien shapes, or even less fantastical stuff, like how James’s therapist (Nicola Alexis) is seen almost exclusively in fragments of a broken mirror in the first half of the film. But the flashback material does a terrible job of establishing any sort of real-world baseline, making the entire enterprise feel like a ghostly hallucination, which diminishes the impact of the scary stuff.

Perhaps it was the mystery of the dream world that brought Ganz back to Silent Hill. If so, James feels like an avatar for his director: convinced that there’s something essential here, ignoring all the warning signs to the contrary. There’s nothing left to do but check back in another 20 years.