A cursed visitor, wandering aimlessly through obscured streets seeking some kind of meaning and purpose as he shambles between one set-piece encounter to another could describe the script and tormented audiences. 20 years after crafting a semi-decent Silent Hill film, Christophe Gans returns to undo that legacy. This adheres-ish to the plot of Silent Hill 2, but makes mind-boggling decisions and choices that undermine deeper themes and jettisons any sense of nuance, restraint, or understanding of the source. It is baffling how Gans managed to entirely lose the point of this series he is clearly invested in. What is good, is that visually he ‘gets’ at least what the game is supposed to look like. That is all. He understands the town is full of fog, then stumbles in unveiling anything the fog obscures, both literal and metaphoric. Character motivations are delivered in poorly acted exposition dumps, bad VFX delivers more absurdity than scares, and glaring misunderstanding of the source will infuriate even the most casual fans. Even without a fan bias, the movie veers into nonsensical, questionable choices. Especially the wigs they’ve shackled the poor lead actor with. The original game and the recent remake are exceptional dives into psychological and existential terror while this film struggles to deliver anything remotely equivalent despite the attempt to ape the aesthetics, characters and recreate scenes from the game wholesale. But this isn’t simply a bad adaptation of a phenomenal source, this is objectively a bad film. There’s no point in this return to Silent Hill, but thankfully the game series has been continuing to deliver exciting new entries that will hopefully ensure the stain of this fades quickly.