Fleshy, Francis Bacon-esque monsters in high heels; hordes of skull-sized cockroaches; a bloodied, blade-wielding ogre with a metal pyramid over its head — these are just a few of the macabre delights carried over from “Silent Hill” (2006) into the latest, third installment of the video game film franchise, “Return to Silent Hill.”
But even more so than its predecessors, this update — by the French filmmaker Christophe Gans, who directed the original but skipped the second, from 2012 — looks and feels like it’s meant to be played. The series has never been all that sophisticated about plot, preferring to overwhelm the audience with sensory shocks and an endless parade of weird (albeit intriguingly designed) ghouls, but “Return” cranks the chaos factor up several gears. Maybe that’s a logical shift for a franchise about a creepy New England town that jostles its visitors around multiple planes of reality. Though, here, it’s not as fun as that sounds.
The story centers on James (Jeremy Irvine), a tortured artist lured back to Silent Hill after receiving a mysterious letter from his lost love (Hannah Emily Anderson). Mary (though that’s just one of her names) appears in a variety of guises — sick woman, jaunty girlfriend, sex kitten adventuress, victimized daughter of a cult leader — that tell us we’re stuck deep in James’s guilt-ridden psyche. James’s therapist (Nicola Alexis) occasionally makes an appearance, but even her reality checks don’t seem all that certain.
The original was no masterpiece (apologies to the cult fandom), but there is something to admire about its baroque visuals and moody atmosphere. This made it, admittedly, one of the more fascinating entries in the video game movie trend that topped out in the 2000s. “Return to Silent Hill” aims for a similar uncanniness — sometimes the actors look like digital doubles — but the result is less phantom realm, more jumbled assembly of cutscenes.
Return to Silent Hill Rated R for bloody violence, frightening creatures and body horror. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters.
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