Return to Silent Hill has gotten its first wave of reviews. As some might have anticipated, they aren’t great, with critics slamming the film for its mediocre CGI and less-than-amazing story. This tracks with the original, which had a similar experience with movie connoisseurs, but it became a cult classic nevertheless.
Could this one replicate that? My heart would like to say yes, but I’m cautiously optimistic.
Whenever Silent Hill (the movie) first came out, video game adaptations didn’t have the best track record. Most of them were attempts at making a quick buck over this “new craze with the kids,” with little thought, care, or effort put into actually capturing the essence of the source material. What made the games great never translated to the silver screen, and Silent Hill was no exception.
However, it stood out by actually giving a damn about what it was adapting and sought to be faithful in tone and representation, if not great overall. It succeeded, but not among critics, who generally hated its story, convoluted plot, and mediocre acting. I loved the first half of the movie, but hated the second, even if both parts had good visuals and moment-to-moment action scenes.
Its attempt at trying to be the quintessential Silent Hill movie (despite the fact that it was the only one at the time) by putting in characters from multiple games into one story further hampered the experience. Do I love the scenes with Pyramid Head? Yes, but he only appeared in the second game, whereas the movie used the first title for its plot, leading to convolution and confusion.
I have yet to see Return to Silent Hill, but much like its predecessor, I feel like it’s not landing with critics for the same reasons the OG one didn’t. It’s almost guaranteed it’ll have average writing and acting, even mediocre CGI, as we saw in the trailers, but fans could still look past that if it keeps to the core of the Silent Hill aesthetic.
However, with only six percent of critics on Rotten Tomatoes willing to rate it above a 6/10 (compared to the 2006 movie sitting at 33 percent), caution should be advised. IMDB does show a 5.9 average, in contrast to 2006’s 6.5, though the latter does include audiences in the calculation.
The starting point seems much like the past, but we’ll have to wait for its full release tomorrow, Jan. 23, to valuably judge the damn thing. Based on the trailers and the fan reaction, it stands to attract a lot of people, even if they wind up hating it by the end.
I just hope it’s got enough soul to warrant a cult following, which many of these lower-budget horror films tend to have, even if they’re tied to a major AAA IP that’s been an inexhaustible well of inspiration for an entire genre, globally.
