Return to Silent Hill
It was happenstance prompted by irresponsibility, artist James Sunderland enjoying the open road and the clear mountain air as he lit a joint and in the momentary distraction of ash falling in his lap almost crashed his speeding open-top sports car, instead only colliding with the luggage of Mary Crane, waiting by the side of the road for the bus out of Silent Hill, her plan derailed by a stranger who hopes an offer of lunch will suffice for thwarting her escape as dark clouds roll in overhead with alarming rapidity.
Years have passed, and along with growing his hair out James’ life has fallen apart, alone, depressed, obsessed with his life with Mary, summoned to return to Silent Hill by a letter and drunk driving in the rain through the night to find the main road closed off, instead travelling by foot through the flooded graveyard to the town taken by flame and ash, haunted by sirens and patrolled by monstrous deformities as he hunts for any sign of Mary.
Brotherhood of the Wolf director Christophe Gans’ first film in over a decade, twenty years after he first launched the cinematic version of Konami’s supernatural horror game, with his Return to Silent Hill he has shifted from the female perspective of his first trip led by Radha Mitchell, Laurie Holden, Deborah Kara Unger and Alice Krige and made the film entirely about tortured self-indulgent artist James, played by Angel of Death’s Jeremy Irvine.
Mary played by Dark Phoenix‘s Hannah Emily Anderson, the daughter of Silent Hill founder and cult leader Jerome Crane, seen only in flashback and memory she is defined by James’ perception of her, and surrounded by a sinister sisterhood all they do is talk of her relationship to James, Anderson also playing town crone Angela in hobo frightwig and surly siren Maria in blonde bob wig, dressed for the apocalypse in male gaze pleasing hooker wear.
Armed only with a cellphone with a preposterously bright light, James staggers through Silent Hill, the decayed and crumbling nightmare world where the few scattered survivors pop up in the timely manner of non-player characters to offer information or prompt the next scary moment, among them the customary fetishised nurses and the iconic Pyramid Head whose presence is reduced to a digitally enhanced bit player lost among the shadows.
A ponderous trawl through the debris of grief and a fantasised relationship with “the girl of my dreams,” Return to Silent Hill may be based on a game but it should not look like a game, everything from the mutated cockroaches to the swarming moths artificially generated and with no threat when there is no presence, the rare practical props such as Mary’s creepy effigy of Dead Dad’s Head more effective in that they actually exist on set, Silent Hill always a name befitting a cemetery but hopefully now ready to lay down and die.
Return to Silent Hill is currently on general release
