I watched the new Silent Hill movie, so you don't have to

It's a typical decision, on a typical day, during a typical week, go on Hulu and see what's new. Well, what I hadn't expected, because I haven't had cable in nearly seven years, is a whole new movie to a horror franchise I have grown up with: Silent Hill.

Silent Hill is a psychological and supernatural horror franchise about an isolated town in America that acts as a purgatorial mirror that forces the inhabitants of the town to face and confront their deepest traumas, repressed guilt, and psychological demons. The energy that has been created transforms the small town into a nightmare sequence ruled by a monster named Pyramid Head. It is a franchise that has always understood something that most horror does not — that the scariest thing in any room is rarely the monster. It is the person standing next to it, and what they are trying not to remember.

The movie franchise branched off from the videogame franchise with the same name in 2006 following its succession to the videogame that came out in 1999. 20 years later, here we are in the year 2026 and they're still making them. And honestly? I am glad they are.

Return to Silent Hill, directed once again by Christophe Gans — the man behind the 2006 original — is not a continuation but a reimagining, this time drawing from Silent Hill 2, widely considered the crown jewel of the game series. Where the first film followed a mother desperately searching for her adopted daughter through the fog and ash of a cursed town, this one shifts its focus entirely. It centers on James Sunderland, a troubled painter drawn back to Silent Hill by a mysterious letter from his lost love, Mary — a woman who, by all accounts, should be dead. The premise is quietly devastating from the start, and the film knows it.

The story is loosely inspired by the myth of Orpheus, a man descending into hell for the one he loves, and that framing suits Silent Hill beautifully. There is something deeply fitting about a franchise built on guilt and grief borrowing from a myth about a man who cannot let go. Along the way, James encounters a cast of haunted souls — Angela, a wounded and guarded young woman carrying scars she does not name; Laura, a sharp-tongued child who claims to have known Mary and refuses to be pitied; and Maria, a woman who looks almost identical to Mary but carries herself with an unnerving confidence that James cannot quite bring himself to question. Each of them reflects something back at him. That is, of course, the nature of Silent Hill. The town does not simply terrorize you. It holds up a mirror.

And visually, this film is stunning. Gans and cinematographer Pablo Rosso have crafted the most atmospheric and visually striking entry in the franchise yet. Every frame of Silent Hill feels earned — the rust, the fog, the decay, the way light barely survives long enough to be useful. The monster designs are genuinely unsettling, practical and nightmarish in equal measure, and Pyramid Head's presence on screen carries the kind of weight that makes you understand why this character has endured for over two decades. Jeremy Irvine brings a quiet, simmering anguish to James that anchors the film emotionally, and Hannah Emily Anderson delivers impressive, layered work in a role that asks a great deal of her across multiple dimensions of the same character.

Where the film stumbles, and it is worth being honest about this even coming from someone who loved it, is in how it handles the psychological complexity that made the source material so legendary. In the original game, James Sunderland is disturbing precisely because he is ordinary. He is not a tortured artist or a grand tragic figure. He is a man hollowed out by years of caretaking, resentment, guilt, and a darkness so quiet he could almost convince himself it was not there. The film softens those edges considerably, reshaping him into something more palatable and, in doing so, loses a little of the story's most uncomfortable power. Some of the detours the screenplay takes feel unnecessary, and not every departure from the game earns its place in the final cut. Fans of Silent Hill 2 in particular may find themselves sitting with a bittersweet feeling — admiring what is on screen while grieving what might have been.

But here is the thing. Taken on its own terms, Return to Silent Hill is a genuinely compelling horror film. It is atmospheric, emotionally grounded, and visually confident in a way that most video game adaptations never come close to achieving. It understands the soul of the franchise even when it does not always honor the specifics, and that counts for something. The performances hold it together when the screenplay wobbles, and Gans' direction ensures that the world of Silent Hill never once stops feeling like a place with its own terrible logic.

For a lifelong fan of this franchise, stumbling across it on a quiet night with nothing but a streaming service and years of nostalgia for company, Return to Silent Hill felt like coming home to a house that had been rearranged while you were away. A little disorienting, a little bittersweet, but still unmistakably home. And sometimes, that is more than enough.