Return to Silent Hill, a live-action film adaptation of Konami’s beloved Silent Hill 2, hits theaters later this week. Early reviews for the horror flick are as scary as any monster from the games.
First announced in 2022, Return to Silent Hill releases on January 23. It isn’t connected to the past two Silent Hill movies, even though it was directed by the first film’s Christophe Gans, and is instead a loose adaptation of the PS2-era survival horror classic Silent Hill 2. Marketing for this film has been minimal to say the least, partially because it seems the executives involved realized it wasn’t great back when it wrapped filming in 2023, and the movie is only seeing the light of day after that recent Silent Hill 2 remake did so well. But after the delay and the lack of marketing, perhaps this is a very good horror film? Nope. Doesn’t seem like it.
As of January 21, there are 15 reviews for Return to Silent Hill on critic aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. And the new movie has an abysmal seven percent Tomatometer score. For those not familiar with Rotten Tomatoes, that ain’t a great score. In fact, if this seven percent score holds, Return to Silent Hill will go down as one of the worst-reviewed movies ever. Yikes.
The general consensus from critics is that while parts of Return to Silent Hill look great, the film is a boring, sloppy, confusing, and (perhaps worst of all for the genre) not-very-scary movie about a main character that is hard to relate to and who seems more confused than terrified.
“This powerful survival horror story has been turned into an ugly, laughable adaptation that proves that maybe we should’ve never gone back to Silent Hill,” said Ross Bonaime over at Collider.
“Christophe Gans’s film does away with all the psychosexual nuance of Silent Hill 2,” claims Justin Clark at Slant Magazine.
“I found the experience difficult to sit through and nonsensical from moment to moment, with its confounding story and shoddy CGI matched only by its lack of entertainment value,” said critic Brian Eggert.
At the moment, there is only one non-rotten score, from Dominic Baez at the Seattle Times, and it doesn’t read like a loving endorsement of the movie. Instead, it seems like Baez found most of the movie bad, but enjoyed the ending. The end credits are apparently very “stylish.” When critics are praising your credits and not much else, that’s a bad sign.