Movie review
Viewed on: Blu-Ray
Released: 2026
In 2022 Konami breathed much needed fresh air into the Silent Hill franchise when they announced no less than two new games and a movie. The series had basically withered away through mediocrity and lack of new releases up until this point. The games have become remarkably successful, first striking gold with the excellent remake of Silent Hill 2, review here, and solid reviews with the completely new entry called Silent Hill f.
The movie premise, at least on the outset, seemed promising; although the original script writer was gone, the director of the popular first movie was back and they were basing it on Silent Hill 2. However, after a few unimpressive screengrabs and a trailer, I was sceptical. While the first Silent Hill movie is one of the best movie adaptations around, review here, Silent Hill: Revelation, review here, left a sour aftertaste.
Finally releasing, it caught a lot of negative feedback from cinema visitors, I lowered my expectations to "buy straight on Blu-Ray" and waited for it to arrive in my post box.
I mean, it's worth a watch at home at least?
The answer is, without doubt, no.
And I'm not even hesitating to say so.
It quickly becomes apparent that the budget and quality of effects of this movie is far below par. It has been a while since I've seen such a bad wig and, later in the movie, a hilariously bad beard on the main character. His whole appearance seems so sloppy and in combination with mediocre CGI we're left with what looks like a cut scene from an older game, with real people laid on top a green screen.
Not only is CGI extensively used to the point where the actor is basically just standing in a full location of CGI, it's used everywhere. From wide shots of empty streets, down to indoor room and close shots. Rather than try to tone the usage down and have perhaps smaller scenes to cover it better, they go for big scenes which reveal the CGI in a bad way. Even monsters are far to brightly lit up and get close screen time, revealing a less than favourable fake look to them. Leave the monsters more covered up in darkness, leave it to our imagination!
For instance, a recurring scene from the first movie is a hallway full of nurse zombies with knives. It worked well in the first movie, as it was actors dressed up. Here, it's completely ruined by using CGI. Why even repeat this scene when it's so directly comparable with the excellent scene in the first movie.
I get that pyramid head is a true character from the Silent Hill 2 game, and he was forced into the plot of both the previous movies. But having him come around a third time feels underwhelming. The main monster from Silent Hill 2, which the movie is about, somehow feels like a tacky addition here to make a connection with the previous movies, which incidentally never should've have had him the first place as they were based on Silent Hill 1 & 3.
The plot is a convoluted mess too. Based close to the story Silent Hill 2, it stumbles in its execution of creating the same atmosphere of loneliness, fear, and sadness. The story of the game is truly dark and requires time to build the downfall into darkness for the main character, James Sunderland. In the movie we're sped past a lot of key moments, and the result is building little, to zero, connection with its characters.
Sure, James' wife, Mary, receives a fair bit of screen time, even with flashbacks to their life prior to her death. Although these glimpses perhaps further confuse the plot for those unaware. But iconic characters like Maria, Laura, Eddie and Angela are just confusingly brief and lack depth.
For people that have not played the game must be sitting wondering what the hell is going on. Some of the tension built towards boss monsters is just lacking explanation here and are thrown at viewer. Missing the fearful presence they have when you engage them in a fight through gameplay.
The build-up and main event of the cult in the first movie was a memorable and intense watch; there's no such spectacular ending here. To be fair, the ending of Silent Hill 2 always was subtle, but they could've done something to make it more interesting at least. A lot of freedom was taken in the first movie's ending, I wish they'd stepped up and done something similar here. We're left with a typical story loop; ending where it began.
This is the general problem of the movie; it tries to follow the game, but it doesn't have the time or budget to fulfil this satisfyingly. Be it brief encounters with characters, visually bland locations and sudden changes to key moments without any prior tension being built.
It's a challenging task pointing out anything positive about this mess of a movie. There are two, count them, jump scares that made me, well, jump, and Maria is depicted quite well in both her presence and emotions. The music score is done by Akira Yamaoka and features some new arrangements of his atmospheric music from the game, bit that is all I can muster of positives.
I was not expecting such a disappointing end result. Somehow, it manages to be worse than Silent Hill: Revelation and that is a feat of its own. It's one I'll probably never want to revisit. Something I've done many times with the first movie, and I still can do with the second one.
This movie though, is just bad on a new level. Such a missed opportunity; doing less would've helped it some cases, With smaller scenes, using real locations rather than CGI and hide away the monsters more to leave it to the viewers imagination and focusing to better convey key story moments from the game.
Perhaps after the excellent remake of the Silent Hill 2 game this movie never stood a chance? Maybe making a movie so close to that positive feedback wasn't the best idea? Who knows, but as it stands it does not result in a good watch, with an overhanging feeling of a low budget, messy plot and bland depiction of the characters.
Return to Silent Hill is an unwelcome return to bad game movies.
