Crew
Director – Christophe Gans, Screenplay – Christophe Gans, William Schneider & Sandra Vo-Anh, Based on the Videogame Silent Hill 2 (2001) Created by Konami, Producers – Victor Hadida, Molly Hassell & David M. Wulf, Photography – Pablo Rosso, Music – Akira Yamaoka, Visual Effects Supervisor – Manuel Hufschmid, Visual Effects – Black Sail Pictures (Supervisor – Manuel Hufschmid), Covert, One of Us (Supervisor – Victor Tomi) & Reactor VFX Ltd (Supervisor – Ben Burrell), Special Effects Supervisor – Muhamed M’Barek Toske, Creature Designer – Patrick Tatopoulos, Prosthetic & Creature Designer – Kate Walshe, Prosthetic & Creature Supervisors – Neill Gorton & Rob Mayor, Production Design – Mina Buric & Jovana Mihajlovic. Production Company – Electric Shadow Company/Supernix/WIP/Ashland Hill Media Finance/Konami/Richmond Pictures/Maze Pictures/Penzing Studios/Black Sail Pictures/Lipsync.
Cast
Jeremy Irvine (James Sunderland), Hannah Emily Anderson (Mary Crane/Angela/Maria/Moth Mary), Evie Jayne Templeton (Laura), Ljiljana Velimirov (Armless), Giulia Pelagatti (Armless/Spider Lady), Robert Strange (Pyramid Head), Nicola Alexis (M), Pearse Egan (Eddie), Matteo Pasquini (Homeless Man)
Plot
Artist James Sunderland nearly ran down Mary Crane while driving. In stopping to help her repack her suitcase, he ended up causing her to miss her bus and so offered her a ride into her hometown of Silent Hill. This turned into a romance. In the present, James has fallen into alcoholism following the breakup with Mary. He now receives a letter from Mary, begging him to come back. He returns to Silent Hill to now find something has happened to the town, which is covered in ash everywhere and overrun by outlandish creatures.
Silent Hill (1999) was a computer game created by the Japanese company Konami. The game came out after the huge success of other horror games like Resident Evil (1996) with their focus on survival horror. Silent Hill placed the emphasis more on atmosphere and the uncanny than killing monsters. There were three follow-up games though to 2004, which are considered the best versions of the game. The three that continue on from there found less popularity, although the game enjoyed a new acclaim with the recent remake Silent Hill 2 (2024).
That success led to the film adaptation Silent Hill (2006) from Christophe Gans. I regard this as a standout Videogame Adaptation, although it received a mixed reception from the fans due to departing from key lore of the game. Far less popular was the sequel Silent Hill: Revelation (2012) from M.J. Bassett, about which nobody, film or game fan alike, has good things to say. There have been announced plans to make another sequel, before that eventually emerged with Return to Silent Hill.
Returning to the director’s chair is Christophe Gans, who first appeared with The Drowned segment of the H.P. Lovecraft anthology Necronomicon (1993), followed by the underrated manga adaptation Crying Freeman (1995), the historical monster movie Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) and a beautifully dreamy adaptation of Beauty and the Beast (2014). Gans has also produced the ghost story Saint Ange (2004) for Pascal Laugier.
The first Silent Hill film had an incredibly creepy and unworldly atmosphere. After the dismal experience that was Silent Hill: Revelations, one looked forward to Christophe Gans’ return to the franchise in the hope he would re-enervate the material. The fact that Gans spent over a year in pre-production said promising things. But …. yeah well. I don’t usually pay attention to a lot of other notices before I watch a film but Return to Silent Hill received some fairly negative reviews.
First of all, Christophe Gans does well when it comes to recreating more of the otherworldly atmosphere with the town covered in perpetual fog and ash everywhere you look. There are some outlandish creature effects – a return of old familiars such as Pyramid Head and a variant on the mutant nurses (who are not quite as harrowing a creation this time). The best achieved of these is the creature known as Armless, which has a blank face and stumbles about at an angular gate with its arms bound behind its back, while a hole in their body vomits out a black ichor that has deadly acidic effect. Or else a deadly spider creature that scuttles about on the ceiling and a mattress that is able to get up and move around that has a body trapped inside.
On the other hand, there is a familiarity to what is going on. There is the feeling we have been through all of this before. And in revisiting it, Christophe Gans never seems to find the same atmosphere of uncanny creepiness. It may be that this was something that worked so well the first time around, that this is just more of the same and by now we are used to it. It is also because this time around Gans is shooting using virtual sets. I could not find any information to what scenes where were virtual and what were sets, but a number of scenes there is the definite feeling that what is surrounding the characters is artificial in its depth.
There is also the plot. This is a fairly simple one – venture into the town and rescue the girl. The original Silent Hill 2 (2001) videogame and the remake, which have almost the exact same plot, were celebrated for their psychological depth and complexity. But here that is reduced to characters running around burning hallways and hospitals searching for Mary. (For some reason I was unable to discern, the actress Hannah Emily Anderson plays multiple different lookalike characters). The psychological depth of the original is reduced to a handful of cliché romantic flashback scenes and Jeremy Irvine trying to portray emotion by her bedside.
The latter does bring us to the two leads. Hannah Emily Anderson is adequate, mainly because she gets to play several different roles, which at least allow somewhat of an acting range. And then there is Jeremy Irvine. A look at his bio shows that he trained at the prestigious London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and has appeared on stage, before making his screen debut in Steven Spielberg’s War Horse (2011). Going solely by his performance here, you wouldn’t have guessed. He looks for all the world as though he is a male model who seems to be struggling to express anything when it comes to the acting scenes. Which seems a majorly negative casting choice for a film that is supposed to be adapting a work noted for its psychological depth and complexity. The first Silent Hill had two fine actresses at the centre of it, Radha Mitchell and Laurie Holden, who were able to give their characters depth. Irvine gives the film about all the emotional depth of a cut scene character in a videogame.
Trailer here