As part of a torrential storm of announcements by Konami related to the Silent Hill franchise, they revealed a new teaser for an upcoming movie sequel, Return to Silent Hill.
The forthcoming film will bring back the director of the original 2006 Silent Hill movie, Christophe Gans. And while the movie certainly has its defenders, becoming a cult classic to some, not everyone enjoyed the changes the director made from its original video game source material. The film also largely had a negative critical reception upon its release. Unsurprisingly, the reactions to this news have been quite mixed.
“So happy we are getting a movie based on SH2! I actually enjoyed the movie adaptations of SH1 & SH3 so I’ve been waiting on this one for a while! Especially since it was basically teased to us at the end of the last movie but nothing ever happened with it #ReturnToSilentHill,” one fan said, referencing the even more critically reviled sequel released in 2012, Silent Hill: Revelations.
“NEW FILM WITH CHRISTOPHER GANS RETURNING TO DIRECT – YESSSSSSSSSSS #SilentHill #Returntosilenthill,” another fan wrote, clearly excited at the prospect of Gans once again directing a movie in the franchise.
“It’s happening we going back to silent hill im 100% seing it day 1 in cinema #returntosilenthill,” another movie fanatic wrote.
However, it was clear not everyone felt the Silent Hill movie franchise needs continuing.
“[A]nother silent hill movie oh brother,” one commentator wrote while sharing a meme of a very underwhelmed-looking monkey.
“Sorry but I’m not excited for another silent hill movie who made Harry’s character into a woman cause being a good dad was ‘too feminine,’” another fan wrote while bringing the receipts.
“[J]ust remembered the guy directing the new silent hill movie made harrys character a woman in the first movie bc he’s ‘feminine,’” was the caption shared by another fan while sharing a SpongeBob meme.
“Silent Hill 2 looks good, Silent Hill F has me cumming. I could give a f–k about a movie or tv series,” wrote the gaming YouTuber known as SomeOrdinaryGamers.
“[T]he new #SILENTHILL movie storyboards look promising,” another Twitter user sarcastically wrote while sharing a mashup image with another gaming horror franchise.
“[N]ew Silent Hill movie looks crazy,” one person wrote while sharing a very literal interpretation of the movie.
“[T]he new Silent Hill movie is gonna be epic!” another Twitter user wrote while sharing an image of Chris Pratt as the main character, because why not?
It’s truly hard to know where to land on this forthcoming movie news. On the one hand, Gans has revealed Return to Silent Hill will be inspired by the acclaimed video game Silent Hill 2, and has pretty much been teasing the film as a direct adaptation. On the other hand, 2006’s Silent Hill was truly a mixed bag.
To be fair to Gans though, the boring Sean Bean scenes in Silent Hill were the result of studio meddling as his character was originally meant to have a much smaller role, according to Screen Rant. It’s entirely possible the film would have been much better without those extra scenes which most people who have seen the movie agree brought the momentum of the story to a screeching halt each time.
Though there has been no release date announced, Return to Silent Hill is currently in active development as we speak, for better or worse.