Return to Silent Hill

Ok, so I don’t remember going to “Silent Hill” first time around (in 2006), but after this I am certain I will never go again. At least Christopher Gans had enough wits about him to cast someone easy on the eye in the lead, but even the ashen-looking Jeremy Irvine couldn’t breathe any life into this. He’s “James” who meets up with “Mary” (Hannah Emily Anderson) after he managed to hit her luggage with his car. Thereafter they flirt, court, move in together, split up - but as far as this plot is concerned, in no coherent order and only delivered to us by way of flashback. It’s only as he returns to find her again he discovers the town is now the victim of what looks like a nearby meteor strike and the place devoid of all but some curious humanoid creatures that definitely mean him harm. Can he put the pieces of this emotionally confused jigsaw together? Do we care? If this were just to have been a monster film with Irvine in a semi-psychotic fight for survival, then perhaps it might have worked better. It isn’t. The timelines are all over the place; characters appear and the disappear seemingly quite randomly and the psychological impact of the story is so compromised as to render this little better than a mess that looks every inch an incremental video game put onto a big screen. Some of the creativity behind the visual effects is to be commended but the story is completely lacking in either characterisation or substance. It will kill some time on the telly in October, maybe, but otherwise this has little to recommend it to anyone.