Although it was criticized upon its release in 2006, Silent Hill quickly acquired its status as a cult work, both among novice spectators and fans. For a long time he remained the exception among a multitude of failed video game adaptationsthe one that we cited as a counterexample when we noted that Hollywood did not understand the tenth art. A success that we owed to French director Christophe Gans.
Enjoy Silent Hill 2 on PS5
The dad of Wolf Pact and of Crying Freeman, big player himself, had managed to capture the spirit of Silent Hilldelivering an adaptation not strictly speaking of the first game in the saga, but of its atmosphere, of what had inhabited the players for hours. The film respected its model while assuming its own identity, notably through a more visual horror.
Quite the opposite of its sequel, Silent Hill: Revelation (3D)released six years later under the direction of MJ Bassett. This time, we fell into fan service, highlighting, heavy dialogue and greasy action replacing the horror. The film proved that the production had absolutely not understood the origin of the success of Gans’ work. So when the latter announces taking over the controlsa third film, inspired by Silent Hill 2being the most beloved opus by fans, inevitably, we have this little thrill of excitement.
The Return of Revelation
After receiving a letter from Mary, the woman he loved deeply, James returns to Silent Hill to find her. But the city he knew has changed a lot and today seems inhabited by darkness. Covered in thick fog and ashes, dispossessed of its population, the city sees monsters emerge from its depths. In the middle of a nightmare, James must face his fears if he wants to find his lost love.
“When did everything go wrong? ». Here is the only question that one could legitimately want to ask the filmmaker after watching Return to Silent Hill. Preceded by the first catastrophic returns and not very reassuring promotional images, we still find it hard to believe that all our fears have been confirmed.
However, it is obvious that Gans is sincere in his desire to do justice to the second video game part and certain shots suggest that the director of Silent Hill is still there, twenty years later. Despite a budget half the sizewe feel a real desire to do well.
So how can we explain such a result? How to explain that this Back looks more like the Revelation episode than the 2006 episode? We know that the director has filmed little over the last decade, but not to the point where his new film is twenty years late on all its aspects, even seeming more dated than the first feature film.
Perhaps the pressure of tackling a video game monument was too great? Gans tries the same approach as in his first attempt, however, this time he stumbles on every obstacle. Where his narrative additions made Silent Hill, the film, more digestible and understandable for the spectator, this Back East considerably weighed down by its side steps, to the detriment of the initial point.
Silent ill
Gans seeks to create a similar atmosphere, but the too many flashbacks only break this dynamic, without adding anything relevant to the story. These sequences intend to overexpose the James / Mary relationship, shed more light on the latter and thus distort everything that the game liked to leave in the shadows. Worse, they introduce an original subplot as useless as it is inconsequentialwithout any impact on the main story.
The feature film is hit with a violent crisis of acute over-explanationcommenting on each scenario element as if he was constantly afraid of losing the viewer. This is exactly what was accused of Revelation and greeted in Silent Hill (2006). Where the mystery should set in, the film spends its time dispelling the fog, ensuring that we understand its intentions. The writing is crude and repetitiveto the point that it quickly becomes impossible to get involved in the game, as we have the feeling that we are being pulled by the hand like idiots.
We still recognize Gans in a few well-intentioned shotslike a kill filmed from an iris or a frantic race through the streets reminiscent of its model. However, the rest of the production is in the same tone as its scenariothe filmmaker seems obsessed with our understanding of his work. We could talk about his labyrinths filmed from above or his visits to the hospital, but the biggest betrayal concerns the iconic Pyramid Headmonster closely linked to Silent Hill 2. Its importance and its link with James are at the heart of the game’s storyline. Here, the secret lasts only a fraction of a minute, the camera emphasizing three times (!) during a single sequence on the nature of the monster.
Each symbol quickly ceases to be one, emptying the film of all emotional significance and dramatic tension. We move from one sequence to another without stopping on what Return to Silent Hill seeks to tell, since in any case, he will repeat it to us several times during 90 horribly long minutes. There are no more these heavy silences, just text comment on text comment.
The monster is the film
The whole is little helped by a disembodied cast that struggles to find the right tone between wigs and green backgrounds. Jeremy Irvine only benefits from a very vague forced resemblance to his character; Hannah Emily Anderson plays each scene as if it belongs in a different film; and the rest of the cast is content to provide a functional presence, often only to wink at the game.
Subscribe to WorldOfSoftware
Return to Silent Hill chooses not to choose. Aware of the height of the step, he refuses to literally adapt Silent Hill 2. However, he uses the characters, the common thread and several iconic shots, without ever managing to embrace an own identity. Everything is messy, regularly quite ugly (numerically, the film hurts the eyes), and we find sequences almost identical to those of the 2006 film, with much, much less flavor (hello nurses).
In the end, we especially have the feeling that Christophe Gans, armed with the best intentions, is running two hares at once between his video game model and his cinematographic past. He fails on both counts, giving birth not to a Backbut a new one Revelation.
Enjoy Silent Hill 2 on PS5
🟣 To not miss any news on the WorldOfSoftware, follow us on Google and on our WhatsApp channel. And if you love us, .
