After receiving a letter from a supposedly deceased loved one, a guy wades into a town that has been turned into a demonic, monster-filled pool of rot. This video game-based movie has some impressive production design, but the plot is far from cohesive. Viewers are left with profanity, stretched-skin creatures, rotting corruption and gory insanity.
When James first met Mary, he wasn’t looking for anything more than scenic inspiration for his paintings. But after almost causing a car accident and, in turn, ruining Mary’s planned bus trip, he found inspiration for so much more.
For one thing Mary was gorgeous and delightful. And she soon became imprinted on James’ view of everything. But secondly, her hometown of Silent Hill—with its lovely hilly backdrop and nearby lake—embodied all the scenic beauty James was seeking. So, he quickly took up residence in that hidden away place.
With time, though, everything fell apart. Mary had a dark side to her, something poisonous thrust upon her by her domineering, now deceased father—and that man was nearly worshipped in Silent Hill. In fact, some would say it was a cult-like worship, that it was a very real and very dark reality.
In any case, James finally reached his limit, got in his car and drove away,
Now, years later, James is a troubled man. He was told that Mary died after he departed. And her death left James in misery. He abandoned her there, held captive by her father’s creepy coven of “followers.” Guilt has driven James to distraction, even though his therapist admonishes him to let Mary go and come to grips with his life.
Then a letter arrives, calling him back to Silent Hill. It pleads for his help. And … it is definitely written in Mary’s neat and measured script. So, James rushes back to the town he should have never left, to the woman—the victimized woman—he should have gone back to find long ago.
However, when James enters Silent Hill, he finds himself descending into a corrupted and corroded place that he no longer recognizes. It’s now a desolate town shrouded in fog and falling ash. A deeply oppressive world of rusted metal, chain-link fences and gore-smeared alleys. And there are grotesquely twisted creatures here made of knotted muscle and straightjacket-like stretches of skin.
How is this possible? And where is Mary? James must find her, even in this demonic place called Silent Hill.
In short flashback clips, we see that James and Mary do earnestly care for one another. And though James is now mentally broken, he continues to look for the woman he loves. (The movie ultimately leaves James in a situation that could be interpreted as a moment of redemption and fresh beginnings.)
We meet a group of people who are eventually revealed to be witch-like individuals who worship Mary’s father in cult rituals. James sees one of these rituals in which Mary is stripped down and covered in a gold substance (no nudity). They roughly carry the young woman aloft, jamming their fingers in her mouth and smearing her with blood.
James discovers a small shrine to Mary’s father in a wall nook—holding a bust of the man and other candles and items.
As mentioned, Return to Silent Hill depicts monster-like creatures, though their existence has nothing to do with faith or supernatural forces.
We see James and Mary kiss on several occasions. James also kisses a Mary-like doppelganger named Maria. (Maria looks just like Mary but wears a low-cut, midriff-baring top with a mini skirt.) It appears that James and Mary were living together before their split.
There’s also a certain sexuality evoked by some of the monsters in Silent Hill.
The creatures are all designed to deliver a sense of bone-cracking, jittery-movement terror. But, for instance, a room full of “Bubble Head Nurses” are all dressed in tight and sexualized nurses’ outfits that draw attention to their body parts and curves.
Another tightly wrapped skin-creature, with no facial features, looks like a woman in bondage with her arms wrapped tightly against her body. And one monster has Mary’s face: It’s attached to a naked female body that sprouts elongated spider-like legs. (Initially we see this creature as a bruised and naked woman laying on the ground with her back to the camera.) The camera catches sight of the creature’s bare breasts and a close-up view of its very feminine backside as it’s dragged off a table. A creature called Red Pyramid is a muscular shirtless man with a pyramid for a head.
A young woman lifts the edge of her skirt to reveal a man’s hands gripping her thighs.
This movie is awash in deadliness. There are creatures that slash at people with knives and spew corrosive acid from orifices on their chests. Rats and large roach-like creatures swarm up out of the sewers and consume everything with flesh in their path. The roach creatures have small skeletal bodies with gnashing teeth. The attacking Bubble Head Nurses are battered back by James, and one or two fall to the ground and get their heads crushed like eggshells.
The huge Red Pyramid man hoists a woman into the air after stabbing her with a large blade. He then proceeds to slowly hack the woman’s body in half lengthwise. This creature also beats up James. The Red Pyramid man also attacks a large spider-like monster, lopping off its legs and pounding on its female-like body.
A man smothers a suffering sick woman, effectively euthanizing her, but he later feels the guilt of her death. A different woman with a large knife considers suicide. A man drives recklessly and almost collides with an oncoming truck. We see two different people drown.
James creates paintings featuring Mary. Some of them showcase bloody slashes on her or her blooded body parts. James also has painfully agonizing mental attacks that show quick flashes of people jamming fingers into a woman’s open mouth and eye sockets. James himself is lifted into the air by a multilimbed creature on the ceiling. The creature jams a hand down James’ spasming throat.
A group of people tear at a woman, wrenching her around and leaving her covered in blood. A man is reduced to a smoldering heap of goop by acid. One woman has a large bloody gash left in her abdomen. A large hotel is set afire and people run through its burning and crumbling hallways. Someone reveals the large sores that cover his body. A woman has an unexpectedly massive nosebleed. She reports that people have been feeding her poison since she was a child.
Someone drives a vehicle into a lake, presumably killing himself.
We hear of a huge forest fire and a subsequent flood that demolishes a pretty area. And we’re told that a biohazard has swept through a town, killing many of the inhabitants.
The movie’s dialogue is peppered with 15 f-words and three or four s-words along with multiple uses of “h—,” “a–” and “a–hole.” Jesus’s name is misused once.
In one flashback scene, a troubled James has been drinking heavily and is quite drunk. In another scene, a drunken James gets into a bar fight and is hauled out by club bouncers.
Maria smokes a cigarette.
The film deals heavily with the topics of mental health and insanity.
The world of the corrupted version of Silent Hill is decayed and covered in filth. Food decays, corruption spreads and gore drips everywhere. A young girl carries an ugly-looking doll around, and we eventually learn that it is a living, deformed baby. A guy vomits into a rancid toilet.
Twenty years after adapting the first Silent Hill video game for the big screen, director Christophe Gans returns to apply his moviemaking skills to the second installment in that popular gaming franchise. Many fans recognize 2001’s Silent Hill 2 as the creepiest and most immersive installment in the long-running horror-survival series.
In that light, Gans fills Return to Silent Hill with an impressive production design depicting believable corruption, rot and contorted monsters born of madness. In fact, the film’s CGI visuals can feel, at times, like enhanced images plucked right out of original source material.
However, from every other angle, this pic is as empty as a Bubble Head Nurse’s noggin. The film feels like a series of jumbled Silent Hill cutscenes that don’t all stitch together. Gans tries to keep audiences connected through flashback scenes depicting a failed love affair, a bloody, religious cult and a man’s ever-stumbling decent into raging lunacy. But the result is a pointlessly gruesome fever dream with a hard-to-pinpoint plot.
Return to Silent Hill might serve its purpose for game fans who simply want movie-sized versions of macabre gore and writhing, bone-clicking creatures wrapped in tight swathes of skin. But that’s about all that moviegoers will get.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
