Silent Hill is a video game franchise that is built on a dreary atmosphere, dreadful suspense and psychological torment: all qualities that Return to Silent Hill repeatedly misunderstands and eventually painstakingly ignores.

Return to Silent Hill is the recent film adaptation of the second Silent Hill game, Silent Hill 2. This game has been morbidly enjoyed by horror fans all over the world since the original 2001 video game’s release. Being one of the earliest virtual worlds to frame game development as a means of artistic expression, it pioneered the survival horror genre as we know it.

Silent Hill 2 is intensely personal, exploring guilt, grief and emotional trauma. Return to Silent Hill, however, chooses the exact opposite approach and delivers a shallow, generic horror experience. The viewer is dragged from one scary-ish encounter to the next, with no significant emotional connection to what’s even going on.

While many poorly made horror movies may have some comedic entertainment value, Return to Silent Hill sets up only boredom and disappointment. Though there is impressive visual design that stays quite faithful to the original game, it ends up being superficial due to the cumbersome acting.

The original game uses fog, silence, isolation and slow pacing to build the player’s suspense. This is much appreciated by players because it becomes so immersive. In contrast to this, the film relies heavily on frequent encounters and overstimulation to encapsulate the viewer’s attention. Eventually, when the viewer becomes aware of the process, fear is predictable rather than unsettling.

“I’m a big Resident Evil fan, which is often compared to Silent Hill. I thought about seeing the movie, but once I saw it had an average Letterboxd score of 1.6 out of 5, I lost interest,” said senior Braden Fisher.

Horror fans who have not played Silent Hill 2 may find very surface-level enjoyment in this film. It can function as a standard horror movie, but longtime fans are bound to find it hollow. The emotional strain and moral ambiguity that are present in the game are reduced to such a forgettable horror movie. It fails not only as a film, but as a tribute to one of gaming’s most iconic franchises.

Return to Silent Hill serves as a cautionary tale to all directors who plan on adapting video game property. Even if an adaptation film is half decent, the reviews will be bombarded with disappointed fans because it simply didn’t live up to expectations.