Christopher Gans returns to Silent Hill with new adaptation of Silent Hill 2

Return to Silent Hill brings back director Christopher Gans for a new film set in the ash-strewn ghost town, adapting the Silent Hill 2 video game. The film opens in cinemas on 23 January. The review notes the original 2006 Silent Hill gained a cult following but was not a genre classic, and that only a little-seen 2012 sequel followed until now.

In this instalment Jeremy Irvine plays James, who meets Mary (Hannah Emily Anderson) after a chance traffic-accident encounter; he moves to her town as a painter and most of their relationship is shown in flashback. After they separate, James receives a mysterious letter and returns to Silent Hill looking for her.

The reviewer describes James arriving to find the town barely populated and covered in ash, forcing his way past a blocked tunnel and pressing on despite warnings, including a filthy man who vomits and describes the city as "one big cemetery." The film is said to spend much of its runtime with James wandering through visually distinct, eerie locations and encountering strange sights.

The review praises some striking imagery — a horde of creatures likened to a cross between shaved rats and Alien’s xenomorphs, and a therapist (Nicola Alexis) seen mostly in fractured-mirror fragments — but argues the flashbacks do not establish a real-world baseline and the film struggles to escape the open-ended feel of gameplay.

Key Topics

Culture, Christopher Gans, Silent Hill, Jeremy Irvine, Hannah Emily Anderson, Nicola Alexis