Parents' Guide to Return to Silent Hill

Paying fastidious homage to the video game Silent Hill 2, this horror movie has some impressive visuals and production design, but it skimps in the character and story department. Directed by Christophe Gans, who made the original 2006 Silent Hill movie (but wasn't involved with the 2012 sequel, Silent Hill: Revelation), Return to Silent Hill doesn't do much to make a case for movies being based on video games. In the original 2001 game Silent Hill 2 (which got a modern-day makeover in 2024), James meets various supporting characters who are designed to warn him, give him clues, or push him in the right direction. In a movie, those kinds of characters feel like thin devices rather than flesh-and-blood people. By sticking so close to the game, the movie traps itself, limits itself, and proves that the ways in which games and movies unfold are two very different things.

While it may feel like James has a complex backstory after many hours of gameplay, the movie version is flat and uninteresting; he often seems confused, clueless, or self-involved. (His cheesy, quickly abandoned narration doesn't help.) The actors don't have a ton to work with, and even the fact that Anderson plays several different roles fails to impress. Although Gans tries to play up the idea that James may not be living in reality—that these occurrences might be hallucinations, nightmares, or something supernatural—his attempts still feel hamstrung. All of that said, the atmospheric town of Silent Hill is admittedly ominous and foreboding, even if its monstrous residents look a little too much like rubbery CGI. Die-hard fans of the franchise may get some enjoyment out of Return to Silent Hill, but anyone looking for a good story and a genuinely scary movie is urged to pass right on by.