Return To Silent Hill Reviews Call Movie ‘Frustrating’ and ‘Ugly’

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With so many remakes and reboots being made, the Silent Hill series keeps getting revisited – and often disappoints. Hollywood continues to try turning video games into movies, hoping for success, but critics frequently criticize these adaptations.

Dominic Baez of The Seattle Times compares watching the movie Return to Silent Hill, based on the popular game Silent Hill 2, to seeing the game reflected in a shattered mirror. While the core elements are present, the movie feels fragmented and strangely unfamiliar. Baez suggests this makes Return to Silent Hill more of a re-telling than a true adaptation, and finds it both frustrating and captivating.

Film critic Ross Bonamine strongly disapproves of the new Return to Silent Hill movie. He argues it’s a poor adaptation of the classic Silent Hill 2, calling it ‘ugly’ and ‘laughable’ and suggesting the franchise should have been left alone. Bonamine believes the film attempts to be both frightening and thought-provoking, but fails to succeed at either.

GamesRadar+ wasn’t impressed with Return to Silent Hill, calling it neither a good adaptation of the source material nor a strong film on its own. In a review giving the film just one-and-a-half stars, Ashley Bardhan described it as unnecessarily disturbing, comparing it to ‘salting soup with blood’.

Return to Silent Hill Should Be The Last Return To Silent Hill Movies For Good

Most critics agree that Return to Silent Hill follows a common pattern for horror game movies: it has a good idea, but the final result is disappointing. It’s not the only one – movies like Resident Evil have received similar criticism, even though fans often enjoy them.

Kyle Logan of ScreenAnarchy called the movie a major disappointment, especially considering it’s based on a beloved video game and made by a director who previously adapted the game’s world well for film. He simply described it as a ‘bad’ movie.

Okay, let me tell you, Justin Clark at Slant Magazine really tore into Return to Silent Hill. He argues that even without knowing the game it’s based on, the movie is a mess. He’s not exaggerating when he says the green screen and special effects are some of the worst he’s seen in years – so bad, they don’t even reach the level of being unsettling, they just look…cheap. Compared to how beautifully the first Silent Hill film and Revelation were made, this new one feels less like a sequel and more like a spiritual successor to Birdemic. Seriously, it’s that bad.

The movie Return to Silent Hill serves as a warning to film studios eager to adapt successful video games. It proves that a popular source isn’t a recipe for success, and critics will likely criticize a film that loses the core elements that made the original game so appealing.

Return to Silent Hill opens in theaters on Jan. 23.

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2026-01-21 20:36