After twenty years, director Christophe Gans returns to the cinematic universe of Silent Hill. His second film in the franchise is a fully diluted revisit to the foggy horrors of the cursed town that's seen two feature films so far. Two decades later, the director has lost touch with the original movie and offers up an absolutely barren non-creative vision that altogether forgets what made his first film a cult classic.
His translation of the video game Silent Hill 2 revisits many key moments from the game but is never horrifying in the least. Our central character James Sunderland moves from area to area uncovering more and more dastardly creatures, but does so with no emotional weight or dynamic. This is just flat filmmaking at its worst. Relying on the good will he created in 2006 does nothing for his long-awaited sequel. Return to Silent Hill is a reminder of why video games are often times so hard to transpose to the big screen.
The script here is dull. The very few characters are devoid of any depth. And the visual elements are just straight boring. You'd think with the advent of new technologies in the last two decades that there would be some momentum driving this to at least look interesting. Unfortunately, the green screen work is horrendous and the creature effects are visibly dated. The writers fail at every turn with their attempt to condense the entire story to an extremely short run time. At the core, Return to Silent Hill is lacking the atmosphere and tone that were so vital to the game.
Gans knows how to function in the world of horror. His Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) is a prime example of him working in that genre palette. It seems he's lost a bit of that magic. Attempting to translate a classic game on a low budget of $23 million is certainly a hard task. Yet, with proper character development and an actual script, this could have been way better. They concentrated too much on monster designs over creating an intriguing plot. There is so much mythology to work with in the Silent Hill universe that it shouldn't have been a challenge. But Gans and his production team absolutely fail at creating a movie that anyone can connect with. Even diehard fans will be gutted at this game to film transition.
Return to Silent Hill is hopefully the last in this movie series. The magic just isn't here as no one can seem to properly imagine it for the big screen. At some point, there will be a reboot. With the proper people behind it, this should be a viable film series. Other than the 2006 original, no one can seem to properly render a cinematic vision for Silent Hill. Perhaps if someone more capable like David Bruckner were given the reins, we could finally be given a great cinematic incarnation of the game.
-CG