The latest installment of the Silent Hill movie series inspired by the video games is imminently arriving in theaters. Return to Silent Hill, based primarily on Silent Hill 2, is having its wide release on Jan. 23. Ahead of the launch, early reviews for the film are pouring in, but they’ve unfortunately slapped Return to Silent Hill with a very unwanted score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Currently, Return to Silent Hill has an approval rating of just 7%. This is the lowest score of the movie series, below the 2006 original’s rating of 33% and 2012’s Silent Hill: Revelation‘s score of 8%. If the rating for Return to Silent Hill rises by at least a couple of points when more reviews come in, it will be able to climb out of its current status of being the lowest-scoring film of the franchise.
An audience score won’t be available for Return to Silent Hill until this weekend when it’s released in theaters. There’s a chance that audiences will enjoy the film more than the critics, as has been the case for the previous movies. The original has an audience score of 63%, making it fresh, and though Revelation has an audience score of 35%, that’s still almost 30 percentage points higher than its rating from critics. Still, in any case, it’s not a strong start for the newest film in terms of its critical reception.
“I found the experience difficult to sit through and nonsensical from moment to moment, with its confounding story and shoddy CGI matched only by its lack of entertainment value,” reads one particularly harsh review by Brian Eggert of Deep Focus Review.
Kyle Logan of ScreenAnarchy similarly stated, “As an adaptation of one of the best video games ever made from a filmmaker who successfully translated the games’ world to film before, it’s a major disappointment. As a movie, it’s just bad.”
Dominic Baez of Seattle Times, who’s currently the only critic to give the film a fresh rating, also wrote, “It shouldn’t work, and it doesn’t a lot of the time, but there’s something compelling in how it all wraps up, how decisions that floundered in the moment feel a little more justified once the credits roll (which are awesomely stylish for some reason).”
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The film stars Jeremy Irvine as James Sunderland, a troubled man who heads to the bizarre ghost town of Silent Hill after receiving a mysterious letter from his lost love calling for his return. Directed by Christophe Gans, who helmed the original movie from 2006, the sequel also stars Hannah Emily Anderson and Evie Templeton.
Return to Silent Hill hits theaters on Jan. 23, 2026.
