“You Live Here Now” – Return to Silent Hill Trailer Scares Away Tourists
- Christophe Gans returns to direct Return to Silent Hill, adapting Silent Hill 2.
- Stars Jeremy Irvine, Hannah Emily Anderson; features Pyramid Head, nurses, and Akira Yamaoka’s music.
- Releases January 2026 after delays and script changes.
The first trailer has been released for Return to Silent Hill, a forthcoming film set in the spooky town with an abundance of deadly, sexy nurses. Directed by Christophe Gans, who was behind the original Silent Hill movie (2006), Return to Silent Hill is an adaptation of Silent Hill 2.
The new movie follows James Sunderland as he travels to the only town in the US with a persistent fog problem, after receiving a letter from Mary, his lost love. It’s coming to theatres in January 2026, with distribution from Bloody Disgusting and Cineverse (the Terrifier series, the forthcoming Toxic Avenger).
“I am delighted to partner with Cineverse, which has shown a genuine understanding of fanship,“ Gans said in a press release. “Return to Silent Hill is an adaptation created out of deep respect for a true masterpiece of a game, Konami’s iconic Silent Hill 2. I hope fans will enjoy and be fulfilled with the experience this new film has to offer.”
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In My Restless Dreams, I See That Town
Fans of Silent Hill 2, the original and the remake, may want to keep their expectations in check, however, as Gans has flip-flopped between saying the new film will be faithful to the source material, but also not feature callbacks.
In a 2022 interview with French magazine Jeuxvideo, Gans (who has directed multiple cult favorite horrors, like Necromicon and Brotherhood of The Wolf), said it was “a new Silent Hill movie that is totally independent from the two previous movies made and respects the way Silent Hill has evolved.”
“Silent Hill is a bit like Twilight Zone, the Fourth Dimension, a place where anything and everything can happen. It is a Silent Hill for today’s audiences while being ultra respectful of the saga.”
The only other Silent Hill movie is 2012’s Revelation, which was directed by MJ Basset (Solomon Kane, multiple episodes of TV series) and took elements from Silent Hill 3. It received almost universal critical disdain for a lack of quality compared to Gans’ Silent Hill (which itself was met with middling-to-high praise).
It’s highly likely Return to Silent Hill will hew a little closer to the games, though, as it was initially set for a 2023 release but suffered multiple setbacks behind the scenes. Most notably, the version hitting theaters next year was written by Gans with Sandra Vo-Anh (the 2014 version of Beauty And The Beast, directed by Gans) and William Josef Schneider (the recent The Crow remake).
Initially, Gans had been working on the script with Oscar-winning Pulp Fiction writer Roger Avary, but this version bit the dust when Avary was arrested for drunk driving and manslaughter.
This Town Is Full Of Monsters!
Return to Silent Hill stars Jeremy Irvine (Outlander) as James Sunderland, with Hannah Emily Anderson (Smoke) as Mary, his estranged, possibly quite dead, wife. Although the first Silent Hill movie was explicitly set in West Virginia (but based on the very real town of Centralia in Pennsylvania), it’s unclear whether this new version of the town Tripadvisor would likely call “rife with cults” is the same one.
However, some elements are being carried over from the 2006 movie (and games). Everyone’s favorite geometric nightmare, Pyramid Head, returns to try and slice people up with a gigantic knife, and the sexy manifestation of a terrible crime, the “Bubble Head” nurses, also reappear. Other monsters are glimpsed in the trailer, as well as the dilapidated hellscape, Otherworld, that Silent Hill occasionally transforms into.
Arguably the aspect of the games that’s most important to replicate is the iconic industrial soundtrack. Good news for fans of screaming audio terror, then, as the game’s legendary composer Akira Yamaoka has scored Return to Silent Hill.
Meanwhile, in the world of video games, Bloober Team are currently set to remake the original Silent Hill, and Konami are on the cusp of releasing the latest entry, Silent Hill f.
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