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I’d never have guessed it, but it looks as if Bloober Team’s remake of Konami’s Silent Hill 2 is actually good. As arguably the bedrock for modern survival horror, I was reasonably skeptical about the idea of updating James, Mary, Pyramid Head, and the bulk of the titular town with modern gameplay mechanics. I was wrong (luckily), and for the first time in what feels like forever, I can augment my Halloween season with some Silent Hill. And there’s no better way to start that off than with Christophe Gans’ underrated 2006 adaptation Silent Hill. You can answer the town’s calls now that Silent Hill is streaming on Peacock.
Per Peacock: A woman searches for her missing daughter in a town enveloped in a living darkness, against which the remaining humans fight a battle for survival.
Gans’ Silent Hill isn’t the movie diehard fans of the games think it is. That honor belongs to 2012’s Silent Hill: Revelation, a movie I inexplicably saw twice in theaters. Sure, fidelity to the source material is lacking, but that’s a requisite element of any game-to-film adaptation. While critically reviled at the time, Silent Hill is now akin to something of a cult classic. It’s big, atmospheric, mean, and distinct among a sea of horror movies clearly inspired by the source material themselves.
Radha Mitchell’s Rose Da Silva is trapped in the town after she brings her adoptive daughter, Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) there for some kind of ill-advised therapy session. The trademark visual cues are all there. There’s a troupe of bent nurses, peeling walls, and most notably, Roberto Campanella’s Pyramid Head, a practical marvel and one of the movie’s greatest strengths.
With the right perspective, Silent Hill is easily one of the early aughts’ defining horror movies. Massive in scale, the narrative might be slight, but so few horror movies risked incomprehensibility for gorgeous, dread-inducing atmospherics. And, really, isn’t the incomprehensibility part of the point? The nightmare lingers precisely because it’s so untethered from the reality we all know.
Luckily, a third film is on the way with Christopher Gans back in the director’s chair. Whether it can match the original remains to be seen, but at least we’ll always have that first visit to Silent Hill. If you haven’t taken the trip yet, trust me—it’s more than worth your time.
What do you think? Are you a fan of Silent Hill? If not, why is that? Let me know over on Twitter @Chadiscollins, and remember, you can catch the film streaming free now on Peacock.
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