Return to Silent Hill, a live-action film adaptation of Konami’s beloved Silent Hill 2hits theaters later this week. Early reviews of the horror film are as scary as any monster in the games.
First announced in 2022, Return to Silent Hill comes out January 23. It is not related to the last two silent Hill films, although it was directed by Christophe Gans from the first film, and is more of a loose adaptation of the survival horror classic from the PS2 era. Silent Hill 2. Marketing for this film has been minimal to say the least, in part because it seems the execs involved realized it wasn’t great by the time filming wrapped in 2023, and the film isn’t seeing the light of day until after this recent Silent Hill 2 the remake worked so well. But after the delay and lack of marketing, maybe it’s a really good horror film? No. This does not appear to be the case.
©Rotten Tomatoes / Kotaku As of January 21, there were 15 reviews for Return to Silent Hill on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. And the new film has an abysmal seven percent Tomatometer score. For those unfamiliar with Rotten Tomatoes, that’s not a good score. In fact, if this seven percent score is met, Return to Silent Hill will be considered one of the lowest rated films of all time. Yeah.
The general consensus among critics is that although parts of Return to Silent Hill looks great, the film is a boring, sloppy, confusing and (perhaps worst of all for the genre) not very scary film about a main character who is difficult to relate to and who seems more confused than terrified.
“This powerful survival horror story has been turned into an ugly and laughable adaptation that proves that maybe we should never have returned to Silent Hill,” Ross Bonaime told Collider.
“Christophe Gans’ film erases all the psychosexual nuance of Silent Hill 2″, says Justin Clark Slanted magazine.
“I found the experience difficult to sit through and absurd at every turn, with its confusing story and shoddy CGI matched only by its lack of entertainment value,” said reviewer Brian Eggert.
For the moment, there is only one non-rotten score, from Dominic Baez to Seattle Timesand that doesn’t sound like an affectionate endorsement of the film. Instead, it seems like Baez found most of the movie bad, but enjoyed the ending. The end credits are apparently very “stylish”. When reviews praise your credits and not much else, it’s a bad sign.
