Why a Movie Will Never be Enough to do Silent Hill Justice

1 week ago 3

Published Feb 2, 2026, 12:00 PM EST

Melissa Sarnowski has been a game writer for over two years. While she's willing to dig into any game for an article, she heavily focuses on The Legend of Zelda, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, and The Sims content, having played games from each franchise since she was a child.

Silent Hill, as a series, is no stranger to movie adaptations. The latest adaptation comes in the form of the recently released movie, Return to Silent Hill, which follows the story of Silent Hill 2. SH2 is an unsurprising pick for an adaptation, as it's a fan-favorite game in the franchise. It also had the chance to bring new players into James' horror-filled journey with the remake done by Bloober Team.

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Unfortunately, movie adaptations of video games tend to have the same issue, regardless of whether they're well-done or not, and that's the amount of content that has to be condensed into a runtime of roughly two hours, at most. Then, games like those in Silent Hill, add more complications, such as the games having multiple endings and movies generally being able to pick only one.

Silent Hill Needs a Limited Series

A Movie will Never do it Justice

Even the shortest Silent Hill games have a lot of small details that come together to tell you the full story that the protagonist is going through. Of course, it's possible to cut out a lot of details and go through only what's necessary for the main plot to make sense, which is essentially what has to be done to adapt a game into a movie, as opposed to making a movie that is set in the game's world, but doesn't follow the plot.

As a result, Silent Hill movies based on the games are always going to feel disappointing to some extent, because they simply don't have enough time to present the story in a way that isn't highly condensed. Instead, studios should look into creating limited series for Silent Hill games, and for gaming-related content in general. If you're spending dozens of hours—and possibly multiple playthroughs to see the full story—in a game, boiling it down to fit into a movie's runtime without butchering the content is impossible.

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It Extends Beyond Silent Hill

While there can be good game-related movies, particularly when they use a game world but don't retell the game's story, you can see that there's an audience for TV series based on video games. Some of the biggest shows on streaming services right now are related to games, such as Fallout and Arcane, which is based in the world of League of Legends. Those are just two examples, but they're far from the only recent game-related series to be made, and they're not the only ones that have gained significant popularity.

Naturally, creating a series comes with its own considerations that are different from a movie. You have to consider the longer production time and the project tends to be a bigger commitment for the majority of people involved. However, if this is where the interest currently is for audiences, it would make sense to capitalize on it with series that follow the stories of beloved games, such as Silent Hill 2.

It's a big task to make a series, whether it's live-action or animated, and that means it's also a large investment. At the same time, you have to consider how much impact the writers have on the series, since an adaptation that strays from the source without a decent reason usually isn't well-received by audiences who are watching because they love the source. Even then, series based on games are an aspect of entertainment that has grown recently, and it just works better to give games the room to breathe that they need through a series instead of a movie, which you often see with games like Silent Hill.