Christopher Gans’ live-action Silent Hill 2 adaptation Return to Silent Hill is currently the lowest-grossing movie adaptation of the beloved horror franchise.
Released last week, Return to Silent Hill boasts the lowest US box office open of the series at just $3.2 million. Gans’ first Silent Hill film opened with a box office of $20.2 million, and its 2012 sequel secured an opening of $8 million.
While not the worst rated Silent Hill movie on Metacritic, that rests with Revelation, Return to Silent Hill has been lambasted as a terrible adaptation of Silent Hill 2, the golden child of the video game franchise. Nevertheless, Gans is still hoping to continue making live-action adaptations of the series.
Speaking to Variety, Gans said: “If I have the opportunity, we’ll come back to Silent Hill once more. I’m not looking at Silent Hill only as a great video game. I’m looking at it as a piece of modern art. It has something really edgy and experimental.
“I will adapt another chapter because there are some that are extremely good, something very different from the first film, and now Return to Silent Hill. I like this world, and I can see that plenty of people are thinking I’m doing a pretty good job.”
Return to Silent Hill makes a number of curious changes to its source material. Protagonist James Sunderland is now a tortured artist instead of a desk clerk, the story is set in the modern day, and multiple characters are no longer independent beings. That’s all we can say without spoiling it, although we wouldn’t suggest you watch the movie anyway.
Gans isn’t the only one interested in making another Silent Hill movie adaptation. In a recent interview with IGN, series composer Akira Yamoka revealed that they would like to work on a movie adaptation of the once-maligned Silent Hill 4: The Room.
“I’d really love to see other Silent Hills become filmed, but if I were to pick one, maybe I would say Silent Hill 4: The Room, because it’s the unique Silent Hill in that it was a first-person game experience,” they said. “And also, the setting is very different from the previous Silent Hills from Silent Hill 1 to 3, which has been transported to a different town, but Silent Hill 4 is different.”
Return to Silent Hill is a pretty damn awful adaptation of Silent Hill 2 made even more bizarre by Gans’ long-professed love for the game. The 2006 movie, an adaptation of the first game in the series, infamously took elements from the second game due to the director’s obsession with the sequel. However, the new movie confusingly misses many of the points of its source material.
Return to Silent Hill is available in cinemas right now, if you’re brave enough. Not because it’s scary, but because it’s awful.
