Return to Silent Hill (2026) - Horror Film Review

The Silent Hill video game series is one of my all time favourites, and was instrumental as one of the catalysts that truly cemented my love for horror when I was growing up. I fondly remember playing the original Silent Hill game back in 1999. I was living with my parents at the time, and in a rare occurrence they had gone away for the night, allowing my 17 years old self to put the Playstation on the 'big' CRT TV in the front room. I distinctly remember staying up until 01:00 in the morning, with the transition from mist world to the nightmarish otherworld at the hospital in that first game causing me to 'nope out' and head to bed scared. All that is to say, the series is special to me, I typically love anything set in that universe.

I was never that impressed with the original Christophe Gans directed Silent Hill that came out in 2006. I've watched it multiple times over the years, but it just never clicked for me. The same weirdly couldn't be said for the M.J Bassett directed and co-written sequel, Silent Hill: Revelation. Most people hate it, but on my admittedly sole watch of it, I enjoyed it, stating in my 8/10 review that while it wasn't a great film, I loved it, and it felt like a movie made for me. So, Return to Silent Hill released at the start of the year and is based on one of more beloved games; Silent Hill 2, whose successful remake came out a few years earlier. Being unemployed at the time I just couldn't afford to go see it at the cinema, and then hearing it was a disappointment my enthusiasm for it kind of dried up and it was forgotten. Having recently gotten Amazon Prime Video again, I spotted it on the service and just had to check it out for myself.

One day while speeding down mountain roads in his open-top car, artist James Sunderland (Jeremy Irvine - The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death) accidentally crashes through the luggage of Mary (Hannah Emily Anderson - Jigsaw), a woman who had been waiting at a coach stop outside the town of Silent Hill, having intended to leave the place for good. There is an immediate attraction between the two, and Mary sees their encounter as a sign that maybe she shouldn't leave the area. In present day some unknown amount of years later, James for unspecified reasons is a complete mess, regularly drowning his sorrows in alcohol, and with a psychiatrist on speed dial. Getting back from a drunken night one evening, he spots a note on his apartment floor, and upon reading it he is surprised to find it is from Mary. The letter asks him to return to Silent Hill, and being so desperate to see this woman once again (his present day trauma seemingly related to her), he immediately gets in his car and drives there. With the route to town blocked off, he heads the remainder of the way on foot and is shocked to see the once bustling town has been reduced to an ash filled ghost town. Things go from bad to worse when he discovers there are grotesque monsters roaming the streets, but being so desperate to meet with Mary, even this isn't enough to get him to turn back.

I started watching this last Friday night, and roughly made it halfway through the 100 minute film before tiredness claimed me and I retreated to my bed chambers. I left that night feeling optimistic, I had liked what I had seen, so was eager to return to the movie the next day. There were some big changes with regards to the story, but it did feel to me like a video game once again brought to life. It turns out the second half of Return to Silent Hill wasn't anywhere near as good, making this a film of two halves. I felt Irvine was a good choice for protagonist, maybe not so much in the flashback scenes, but I loved his performance as the messed up present day James. Most of the film takes place in the present, but when James (who seems to have short term memory loss) revisits key locations in the town, he recalls past events that happened with Mary there. It seems a bit silly to avoid spoilers for a 25 year old video game, but the film gives a different approach, things that are revealed early on in the game are instead revealed as late revelations in this adaption. One change I really enjoyed was with Mary, here she is given a back story that directly links her to the demon worshipping cult that had existed in the town in the previous films, making the slow reveals in the flashback sequences fun to watch. In the games, the conflict that occurred with James and Mary was her getting very sick, here, it is her involvement in this cult that begins to tear the two characters apart. All the other key characters from the game get film versions, though their individual side stories are diluted down to always link everything back to James. Angela (also played here by Anderson) was more akin to walking exposition, rather than a character who felt like she had her own journey going on. Laura (Evie Templeton - Wednesday, Silent Hill 2) acted similar to the games, but she is given a more supernatural feel, operating within the terror filled otherworld version of the town, rather than an innocent who only sees a deserted town. Maria (again Anderson) appears as the strangely familiar looking woman James encounters, but her role is reduced somewhat. Not as much as poor Eddie (Pearse Egan), who only appears in a couple of scenes for about a five minute period of time.

The second half wasn't as good in my eyes as it felt like this part was really rushed through. The apartment block and hospital scenes had time dedicated to them, but after this it becomes dizzying, with James moving from key location to key location via supernatural means, designed to share James' confusion with reality with the viewer. For a game whose story wasn't too large, it seemed weird to cut out so much of it, and some of the changes were plain odd. I appreciated it focused the story squarely on James, but the supporting cast lost a bit to them as a result.
Like in the original film, the monsters here are a lovely blend of live action with CG effects placed over them. A highlight of the film in terms of design, there were some exciting scenes here, such as James being chased across the town by a legion of giant bugs, acid spewing humanoids, and a great (if expected) scene where he is being chased by monstrous looking nurses in a hospital basement. Of course the iconic Pyramid Head also features, and again, like the side characters, he is more linked to James than in the games.
I loved the set design, and the fact that some scenes almost looked like you were watching a video game rather than reality (such as overhead CG shots of James running through the deserted streets) felt strangely fitting for a video game adaption. I get what the director was going for with the dizzying location changes of the second half, but it did lead to a feeling that everything was being rushed through far too quickly.

Return to Silent Hill started off promising, with the first half really feeling like the game brought to life. Many of the changes story wise here seemed to be to the detriment of the story, and these changes began to bother me more and more. It leads to a complicated finish, and an ending that was merely adequate rather than memorable. While not amazing, I could see myself watching this again in the future, and it has made me really want to replay the 2024 remake, so it did something for me. Return to Silent Hill can currently be streamed on Amazon Prime Video.

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The Pond (2021) - Horror Film Review

I really wanted to like The Pond, it sounded like the story was going to be really captivating and engaging. Unfortunately, by the time this ninety five minute movie was over I was none the wiser for what on Earth it was all about. This excels in keeping its plot a mystery, something that becomes a detriment to the viewers experience. My synopsis may sound a little confused!

Marco Canadea stars as the unnamed Professor, a man who in the past was suspended from his University and now spends his days conducting research from a caravan park on a small island in the middle of a very large pond. His research has led him to find some sort of discovery to do with circles. Meanwhile, back at his house just outside the pond is his daughter Abby (Leslie Soo) who has frequent nightmares as well as awake visions of a monster, that both the Professor and his girlfriend say isn't real.

It sometimes felt like this Petar Pasic directed horror had a story that was knowingly obtuse, it sometimes felt like it delighted in baffling the audience, that somehow by making its story so unknowable that it was something far greater than it came across as. I just could not make head or tale of what was going on. The protagonist keeps all his views to himself, making for a frustrating character to follow as he always seemed like he was acting on information that I wasn't privy to. The characters he interacts with also have their own mysterious things happening, such as the man on the island that the Professor daily plays chess with (Paul Leonard Murray), and the mute boatkeeper whose silence is maybe related to the fateful day he once caught an 'impossible' fish from the pond. Nothing makes sense and not in a good way, the Professor for instance keeps seeing sightings of a figure with a mask made out of branches, while Abby's island friends seem to actively delight in secretly teasing her. Then there is the girlfriend whose behaviour gets inexplicably more and more demented as the movie goes on. From sitting at a table pouring infinite water out of a kettle she is holding in her hands, to secretly heading to the island and looking at the Professor's work.

Apocalypse of the Dead/Zone of the Dead (2009) - Zombie Film Review

I noticed yesterday that I have not been as up to date with zombie posts as I originally intended to be when creating this blog. Despite owning over seventy zombie films, my zombie film reviews are few and far between due to my terrible goldfish memory. I brought Apocalypse of the Dead kind of by accident, as I thought I was getting George Romero's latest travesty Survival of the Dead, luckily it was a happy accident! Note that in America the film was released under the title Zone of the Dead.

The film is set in Belgrade, Serbia. A group of agents are tasked with taking a dangerous prisoner across the country so that he can be transferred to Britain. Unfortunately this occurs the same time the Serbian army are doing an 'exercise' in the area which results in the accidental unleashing of a green gas that turns all who come into contact with it into a flesh eating zombie. Pretty soon the agents, their prisoner (who seems to know more about the zombies than anyone), and some random civilians are holed up in a police station as hordes of undead batter on the windows. To survive they are going to have to work together.

The film was released in 2009, so is quite modern in look, and the film is more professional than I expected with good zombie effects, and a rocking soundtrack.  Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead) stars as an Interpol agent. He is looking his age in some ways, but despite being kind of tubby now, he is still real cool. The other acting is of various qualities.  

Ken is one of the only naturally English speaking actors in the whole film.  Despite being made and filmed in Serbia the whole thing is in English. Some characters are good at English. Others look and sound like they are reading a language they do not understand, this is especially of note with the Presidents secretary. Her pronunciation of English is so bad that I really struggled to understand what the heck she was trying to say, I could only make out a few words of anything she said. The third set of actors are those who basically cannot speak English at all, these actors are dubbed...terribly! I can't understand how terrible dubbing can be, special note goes to the porter at the train station who has his back to the camera anytime he speaks! Hilarious. It was obviously made to appeal to an English speaking audience, but Serbian with English subtitles might have been preferable.

The plot is very generic, but this one of the things I really liked about the film.  With the exception of the evil biker gang/military unit all zombie conventions happen, such as one of the humans being bitten, later to unexpectedly turn, the survivor who has a panic attack and pulls down the barricades protecting the group etc. There are a few cheeky nods to Dawn of the Dead;  for instance when one of the survivors suggests barricading themselves in a Shopping Mall, Foree says something to the effect of "trust me, that would not work, eventually the zombies would get in" in a knowing way.

The zombies themselves are cool, and borrowing from the Left4Dead games there are even special infected.  The first victims to turn to zombies are able to run and climb, and have inhuman animal roars they can use to direct the normal zombies. The zombies are made up to look far different than just people in make up, they look like monsters. There is lots of cool violence with various body parts being sliced off, and various decapitations, as well as a severed head using its still attached spinal column to flap around on the floor like a fish.

Apocalypse of the Dead was surprisingly fun to watch. Generic as hell, but I love that in the zombie genre. Do not be put off by the utterly terrible DVD cover art! It's misleading but less than the almost identical cover art for the awful The Zombie Diaries.

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