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Director Christophe Gans attempts to adapt one of the greatest video games off all time, and despite his previous bloated but serviceable take on the first “Silent Hill” game, his stripped-down follow-up comes up short on almost every level. While the plot on its core does sound like the story from the game “Silent Hill 2,” it deviates from it in too many critical ways, with few of those changes being for the better. Adding backstory elements for James and Mary’s relationship wasn’t a bad idea since it should help establish James’ motivation and endear the audience to him and his plight, but shoehorning in the game franchise’s cult in a way that adds nothing to the story was baffling. (James just comes off as a bit of a douche and Mary becomes unrelatable,) The film features all the other important characters from the game, but they’re either just window dressing or they’re changed so drastically that they lose all their importance from the original story. The overall look of the film makes it look cheap like it was a fan film, and the creepy monsters look fine initially, but often seem silly looking the longer they’re on screen. (Also, swapping out the classic fog for falling ash just doesn’t work and this is the second time this director has done this in his adaptions, this time creating yet another excuse for the change.) The acting is almost never convincing, with James’ dry narration not helping matters. Overall, the movie is fairly boring, the story gets convoluted in all the wrong ways and while the game featuring multiple endings that fit the choices the player made, this film seems to at least wrap things up with one of the memorable ones, before it does its own things with a cheesy ending that makes no sense base on the story that it was telling.
*1//2 out of *****