Return to Silent Hill Review – A Foggy Horror Classic

To say that The Outerhaven are fans of the Silent Hill series is a bit of an understatement, given that there are fights that happen when a new game or piece of media from the horror franchise hits the office. So, the Silent Hill movies tend to be a mixed bag, with the first Silent Hill being a good adaptation, and the second one, based on the third game, was average at best. Now, we Return to Silent Hill with the writer/director of the first film returning to adapt the most popular entry in the franchise. Is it a good choice to Return to Silent Hill, or show we have turned around before it was too late to avoid foggy disaster?

Title: Return to Silent Hill
Production Company: Davis Films, Electric Shadow, Supernix, WIP
Distributed by: Iconic Events Releasing (United States), Umbrella Entertainment (Australia)
Directed by: Christophe Gans
Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Hannah Emily Anderson, Evie Templeton, Pearse Egan, and Eve Macklin
Based on: Silent Hill 2 by Konami
Release dates: January 23, 2026 (United States), January 22, 2026 (Australia – 4-day limited run)
Running time: 106 minutes

In My Restless Dreams, I see that Town…

I’m going to be honest, if you have played Silent Hill 2, or the recent remake of Silent Hill 2, then you already know the story of Return to Silent Hill. For the most part, the story remains as it does in the games, so if you are looking for original content, then this movie is not going to be for you. But, for those of you who are Silent Hill fans and have played Silent Hill 2, then you are going to follow along with things perfectly.

For those of you who haven’t played Silent Hill 2, here’s the basic plot:

James Sunderland, an artist, is making his way through the hills when he barely avoids a collision with a truck, causing him to run over the suitcase of Mary Crane, a woman who is trying to leave Silent Hill. The two fall in love, but Mary’s connection with the town’s cult drives James away. After James leaves, Mary succumbs to cancer, dying, leaving James in depression and guilt that causes him to drink heavily and try to paint away his depression.

One night after getting thrown out of a club, James finds a letter from Mary asking him to return to Silent Hill, as something major has happened there. James, suspecting that Mary is still alive, drives back to the fog-filled mining town to find her, and that’s where things really start to go crazy with weird monsters, crazed survivors, and someone who looks very much like Mary, all looking to either kill or keep James in the town.

I won’t give away details from here, but there are enough shocks, twists, turns, and other things to keep you interested during Return to Silent Hill’s 106-minute runtime, with references for fans of the game/series, while giving enough backstory to introduce newcomers to the movie.

Silent Hill of the Damned

• Jeremy Irvine as James Sunderland
  Irvine, as James, sounded like a weird idea when he was announced, but in Return to Silent Hill, he is perfect. From his down and out depression look, to the way he goes from serious, to manic, to depressed, and all over the shop emotionally, he is perfect. The way he recreates moments directly from Silent Hill 2 makes you believe that this might just be someone playing the game instead of watching a movie
• Hannah Emily Anderson as Mary / Maria
  Playing two roles in a single movie is hard enough for any actor; however, Anderson does a good job at playing both Mary and Maria in Return to Silent Hill. The flashback moments are really good in fleshing out the character more than she was in the games, and while Maria is a bit different from her in the remake, it was good to see that they used the original costume for her.
• Evie Templeton as Laura
  Ok, complaint time. I know all about Evie’s history with the game and how well she is playing creepy characters. But in Return to Silent Hill, I just found her looking too old for the character that she was playing. Laura is meant to be somewhere between 8-10 years old, but Evie is well in her teenage years, and she looks it. Trying to make her look younger with a dress and a doll didn’t come off as creepy; it just came off as lazy. That being said, she did what she could with a character she knows all too well.
• Pearse Egan as Eddie Dombrowski
  Probably one of the more interesting versions of the character, you get a bit of the original Silent Hill 2 Eddie in Return to Silent Hill, more than the reboot version. While the clothing choices are completely different than the game, the attitude and switch from commentator to semi-villain works so well. The only problem is that there is no outcome for Eddie as a character, so he just disappears with nothing happening… Unless that was the scene I missed when I was forced to take a bathroom break.
• Eve Macklin as Angela
  I don’t give a shit if they call her Kaitlyn in the credits; she is Angela. For the brief times she is on screen, you feel like she studied the moments from the game so many times that she could recreate them in her sleep. No note here.

Dark, creepy, spooky, bloody

Return to Silent Hill faithfully recreates moments from the game that it is based on, but also adds in some more background of James and Mary’s relationship that builds a deeper connection between the two than it did in the game. Using flashback to torture James, we learn more about how they met, Mary’s connection with the Silent Hill cult, and her relationship with James in general. These additions make the story feel deeper than it needs to be, but at the same time, are welcome additions.

The look of Silent Hill itself feels like it came right out of the remake’s background and interior design images, recreating places like Woodside Apartments, Heaven’s Night, and Brookhaven Hospital in both fog-filled “normal” world, and the iron-filled, darker “other world”. All these scenes are amazingly reproduced, though there are moments where the transition effects look worse than they did in the other movies, given that modern CGI is meant to be better. This might have been a budget problem, so I’m willing to forgive it.

Another big highlight is the creature design. As you can see in the image below, the Patient Demons look perfect compared to their game counterparts, complete with the way they scurry under vehicles to hide or disappear. We also see a lot of Giant Roaches, complete with what they look like from the underside of the bugs, which comes off as VERY creepy when you see them; welcome to your nightmare fuel for the next month. The nurses make a return, though they are limited to one scene this time around. We also see a Doormen too, late in the film, which looks really good, too.

And of course, you get to see Pyramid Head, because god forbid we keep the biggest and most popular demon out of the story adaptation of the game he featured in. To be honest, Pyramid Head does look good in Return to Silent Hill, looking as intimidating as he does in the remake, but without the introduction that he is known for. Speaking of, that moment is replaced with a quick fight with a new creature that was added into this movie: A human who morphs into a spider-like creature that made me have to look away for a few minutes, since I’m an arachnophobic, as this thing would embed itself in my nightmares for months to come.

Just play the game instead

There is very little about Return to Silent Hill that I would call negative. As someone who has played both versions of Silent Hill 2 and is a huge fan of the franchise, I enjoyed the movie a lot, to the point where I didn’t want to go for a toilet break (too much soda) because I might miss something exciting or prominent to the plot.

However, as I say above, I find that one tiny thing that annoyed me about Return to Silent Hill, and that’s Evie Templeton as Laura. Don’t get me wrong, I love Evie as an actor, her run in Wednesday is amazing, rivaling that of Jenna Ortega. And I know that Evie is the motion capture and voice of Laura in the Silent Hill 2 remake, but in Return to Silent Hill, she comes off as too old for the role, and you can’t tell me that with her being in the game, that she wouldn’t know to recreate some of the iconic lines she has from the game? That being said, what happened to many of the lines from the game that we know? There’s no “In my restless dreams”, “I’m here, I’m real”, and no “You didn’t love Mary anyway!”. Some of the best lines from the game have been left out of Return to Silent Hill, and I hate to say, but the movie does suffer because of it.

Silent Hill 2 gets it’s Moment to shine

Return to Silent Hill is a movie that is made for those who have played Silent Hill 2, or at least, fans of the Silent Hill franchise. This is something to be admired as it’s not often that Hollywood would allow something to be so closely adapted from the source material without too much “make it regular viewer accessible”. However, this is going to be the biggest flaw of Return to Silent Hill, as most mainstream reviewers won’t understand the film, shooting it down for being too closely related to “those damn confusing video games” and being made “for the limited nerd fanbase” since they don’t like anything that isn’t swimming in pointless changes to appeal to the dumbest reviewers on the planet. Couple this with a limited theater release run (at least in Australia), and Return to Silent Hill is going to be one of those films that will have a very dedicated fanbase, but has been crippled before it had a chance to run.

Don’t expect Silent Hill: The Room to be made, thanks to bad mainstream reviews and a limited theater run. Streaming/Home media sales are going to be good for people who can’t get to the cinema to see this, but it’s not going to be enough to save the franchise’s future movie ideas.

Review Disclosure Statement: Return to Silent Hill was seen by Karl Dorksen-Smart for review purposes under his own desires. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more details.