Return to Silent Hill was supposed to adapt the second game, but instead, it decided to do something so bad that it might kill all hope for another Silent Hill movie.
Return to Silent Hill (2026) does just about everything wrong you can do for a video game adaptation. The same director who directed Return to Silent Hill also directed the first Silent Hill video game adaptation. That one wasn’t that bad, so I was surprised to see this one be as bad as it is.
I don’t know why they want to just give someone else a chance to direct Return to Silent Hill (2026), since this one was supposed to follow the second game more closely. Silent Hill 2 is one of my favorite games ever, and I think the story is incredible. It’s just so frustrating that they couldn’t at least follow the story a little more closely.
Instead of following the story, which is already written for them and regarded as one of the best-written horror games out there, they decided to completely deviate from it and change most, if not all, of its story beats. They take some of the framework but discard the parts that are actually important to the story, making it unique and interesting.
They take so many elements that make James Sunderland’s character interesting and throw them out the window, along with Mary’s character.
Once again, the director said he had never played the game, and I don’t understand why they keep hiring people who have no idea what they’re adapting to make a film about it. They don’t have to play the game, but they need to have a general understanding of the story, and instead, it seems like he doesn’t understand the story at all.
Even if you haven’t played the game, the story is all over the place. I don’t think anyone would enjoy it. It seems like I’m right, as it’s doing terribly with Rotten Tomatoes, with an under 20% score, and sitting at four stars on IMDb. The competition is very fierce for terrible video game adaptations, with horrible ones such as Until Dawn and Welcome to Raccoon City.
Silent Hill 2 also has some of the greatest music ever for a video game, yet they decided to use only about two tracks from the entire soundtrack, which made no sense at all, since they could’ve easily saved time by just using the original music. Not only that, the casting is really poor as well.
Once again, not understanding the characters in the Silent Hill universe comes into play majorly.
Instead of James Sunderland, our main character, being this shy, aloof, kind of guy, they turn him into this sleek, pretty-boy Jim Morrison look-alike, which doesn’t fit his character at all. There’s nothing wrong with changing things in an adaptation, but we see what happens when they deviate too far from the source material, and it never works in video games.
A great example is The Last of Us television show, which deviated from parts but kept most of the story intact. I’m just so frustrated with this because the Silent Hill 2 story is so well written, timeless, and seemingly one of the most popular horror games ever.
The remake came out recently and got people really excited about the future of Silent Hill, but I don’t think we’ll see any good adaptations anytime soon, given Return to Silent Hill (2026). We might have to just stick to the games.
You have such a great story already written out for you. All you have to do is translate that into a movie, then add some cinematic elements that fit the game and your own flair. It’s not like it’s rocket science. But once again, Hollywood just decides to hire someone who has not played the game and barely understands the story at all, and gives him the keys to make Return to Silent Hill (2026).
The movie is doing terribly on all fronts of release, so I hope they understand they can’t keep doing this. I had a hard time finding things to like about Return to Silent Hill (2026) or any redeeming qualities at all. The CGI is pretty rough at times, and they even copied many of the same traits from the first Silent Hill movie, such as the scene of the scary nurses standing still and then chasing the protagonist.
It’s like they ran out of ideas.
They also slaughtered Eddie’s character. In the game—he has so much depth to him, and they literally had him show up for one scene and then never show up again. It makes no sense to bring him out on screen when he just shows up and leaves.
I don’t know if a lot of things got cut in Return to Silent Hill (2026) or if it was just a crap pile from the beginning, but this is really terrible. The actors are trying their best, but none of them are really that great, unfortunately. It’s not like terrible acting or anything, but they are given such terrible material.
I don’t think anyone could really pull anything special out of it. But they’re definitely trying, and I can at least commend them for that, and I feel really bad for him. If anyone actually plays the game, there’s so much more depth, character arcs, and incredibly intriguing stories to it.
Return to Silent Hill (2026) just completely missed them all.
I also never fall asleep while watching movies, and this was the first time I actually got really close to that. Return to Silent Hill (2026) is just so boring and stereotypical in the horror genre. In the games, James fights off all these unique-looking monsters throughout the story, but instead of that, they decided to have him just run from all of them and also basically get rid of almost all of them as well.
They even replaced some of the cool ones as well in Return to Silent Hill (2026). Return to Silent Hill (2026) is mostly just boring scenes where nothing really happens, or where explanations go nowhere. Or they just add in more terrible ideas that make the story worse and more convoluted.
I’m pretty frustrated with this because I thought it would be much closer to the Silent Hill game, which is what they marketed it as. But why even make Return to Silent Hill (2026) if there’s such a night-and-day difference between the game? I think there’s such a disconnect between people who don’t play games and those who make movies about games.
There are plenty who do both, but these old geezers who run Hollywood are too out of touch to know. Just look at Iron Lung and how great it is doing. No major studio made Iron Lung, and it is killing it.
