The Silent Hill movies are based on the games of the same name. There are quite a few games in the series and most are pretty fantastic. The games are very story based, so you already get an entertaining, and scary, story by playing the games.
There have been 3 Silent Hill movies, with the newest out now in 2026 as this is being written.
Silent Hill – The imagery of this movie is great. It really looks like Silent Hill from the games. I think there are several problems though. The movie follows a lot of what happens in the game, just doesn’t always do it in a great way. Like they were trying to throw everything Silent Hill into the movie with weak connections in the plot. The second issue is the story. While I get what’s going on, it may be difficult for someone that hasn’t played the games. I’m not a fan of hitting people over the head by explaining things, but it feels like they sacrificed story to make sure to get all the scary stuff from the games. But third, and this is connected, along with hard to follow story sometimes, the dialogue can be brutal. We’re talking Anakin in Episode 2.
Certainly don’t hate it, but the first movie could be a bit better. It does a good job of making itself look like Silent Hill, though. But go play the first couple games and you’ll get some great story.
Silent Hill Revelations – First off, why bring the characters back but change their name to other characters from a different silent hill game? I would have just preferred a different Silent Hill movie – let the town be the constant, like the games. It’s never good, though, when they make the video game movie and try to create their own history that’s different from the game. the vague connections to the first movie don’t help this one.
The other thing I don’t get about Revelations is why take half the movie just to get to Silent Hill? The games are like right there immediately and get the backstory quickly.
Overall, Revelations doesn’t evoke the Silent Hill feeling like the first one. It’s a bit more confusing and seems more like a generic horror movie.
Return to Silent Hill – While there are some nice Silent Hill scenes, I didn’t click with this movie. Several scenes I remember thinking “Hey, I played this scene”, but I never felt close to the movie. And it was more a psychological study and the main character may have just been going crazy, so not what I was looking for.
