In my restless dreams, I see that town… Silent Hill. They promised they’d take me there again someday… and now it looks like they are!
Surprising everyone, French director Christophe Gans casually mentioned that he was working on a new Silent Hill movie in a recent interview with Allocine. The beloved but long-dormant franchise has seen faint signs of life over the last week, as there’s been rumors swirling around the video game community that Konami is developing two new entries in the series (one an Until Dawn ‘choose your own adventure’ style game and the other a full reboot of the franchise). And now, it seems that the movie series has also been kicked back into gear.
The director was light on details about the pic, but explained that:
“The project will always be anchored in this atmosphere of a small American town, ravaged by Puritanism. I think it’s time to make a new one.”
Of course, this won’t be Gans’ first stab at the franchise. He was responsible for 2006’s Silent Hill, which isn’t exactly a cinematic masterpiece. The general consensus was that he’d nailed the visuals of the game but that the plot was incomprehensible and the dialogue was awful. Having said that, it was at least better than its sequel, 2012’s terrible Silent Hill: Revelations.
These unexpected revelations may mark a new dawn for Silent Hill. The franchise was famously planned to receive a new entry on PS4 courtesy of Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro. Sadly, though, when Konami restructured themselves into a gambling company, they cancelled the project and all we ever saw of it was the astonishingly brilliant PT demo. Here’s hoping that this new movie and the two rumored games can capture some of the unnerving psychological horror that made first few Silent Hill titles such landmarks in the genre.