Return to Silent Hill favors spectacle over plot

Christophe Gans’s Return to Silent Hill, the third film in the video-game movie franchise, emphasizes sensory spectacle over narrative clarity, a New York Times review by Beatrice Loayza says.

The film carries over macabre imagery from the series — described in the review as fleshy, Francis Bacon–esque monsters in high heels, skull-sized cockroaches and a bloodied, blade-wielding ogre with a metal pyramid on its head — and the reviewer writes that the update “looks and feels like it’s meant to be played.” Gans directed the original 2006 Silent Hill but did not direct the 2012 sequel. The plot centers on James (Jeremy Irvine), a tortured artist drawn back to Silent Hill after a mysterious letter from his lost love (Hannah Emily Anderson); Mary appears in multiple guises, and James’s therapist (Nicola Alexis) offers only tentative reality checks.

Loayza notes the series has long preferred sensory shocks to tight plotting and says Return to Silent Hill “cranks the chaos factor up several gears,” sometimes making the actors look like digital doubles and the film resemble a jumbled assembly of cutscenes. The movie is rated R for bloody violence, frightening creatures and body horror and runs 1 hour 46 minutes in theaters.

Key Topics

Culture, Christophe Gans, Silent Hill, Jeremy Irvine, Hannah Emily Anderson, Beatrice Loayza