Prime Time: Return To Silent Hill (2026)

A friend of mine recently watched Return To Silent Hill and commented that it was somewhat akin to a number of the cut scenes from Silent Hill 2 being stitched together without any real care or consideration for other standard movie elements. I'm paraphrasing slightly, but that seems to have summed up her opinion. I can't really disagree, but I somehow enjoyed this much more than I expected to.

Jeremy Irvine plays James Sunderland, a man who enters the town of Silent Hill as he spends time looking for his lost love, Mary (Hannah Emily Anderson). Once there, he starts to see some very strange and disturbing sights, and also meets a few other lost souls, one of them looking VERY similar to Mary.

A return to the movie series for director Christophe Gans, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Sandra Vo-Anh and William Josef Schneider, this is a ambient mood piece that probably works best as background noise for fans of Silent Hill 2. I've just started exploring that videogame world, although I have some recollection of my time playing the very first game back on the PSOne, and even I felt a comforting familiarity as soon as the early scenes of the movie made it clear that the plot here was sticking very close to the popular game.

The environment is well-rendered and feels very much how it should be. It's mist-filled, many buildings look spoiled in some way, and the more creepy creations move and threaten as they should. It's just a real shame that I cared less about the main character here than I did when he was under my control on my videogame console.

Irvine has his work cut out from him, with most of his performance relying on him to look either bewildered or sad, but he doesn't help himself. Maybe it's the direction, but Irvine feels even more lifeless and noncorporeal than anything else onscreen. Okay, that feeds into some of the main themes of the story, but it doesn't make for an engaging and watchable main character. Anderson does much better, perfectly embodying a welcome bit of light in the encroaching darkness of the town. As for the other cast members who appear, the best ones are the physical performers who end up credited with descriptions like "armless", "spider lady", "nurse", and, of course, "Pyramid Head".

It's a shame that this does nothing interesting with the property, and I can understand people being annoyed by how relatively hollow and dull it is, but I must say that it worked for me. Maybe that's because it just felt like playing through the game without the risk of frustration or unexpected death, two things which happen to me often when I am attempting to overcome my serious videogaming limitations. I can still see that it doesn't work well as a movie, but it works well enough as a collage of Silent Hill 2 highlights.

6/10

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Shudder Saturday: Blood Harvest (2020)

AKA The Ballad Of Audrey Earnshaw.
AKA The Curse Of Audrey Earnshaw.

The sophomore feature from writer-director Thomas Robert Lee, Blood Harvest is an assured and unhurried work, a mood piece that shows what can happen when members of a small community just won't leave their local suspected witches to live their lives in peace. It's well-acted, and well put together. It's just a shame that it's not very good.

The setting is an isolated village in North America, established a couple of centuries previously by families who settled there after separating from the Church of Ireland. This is all related to viewers by opening text. In 1956, after an eclipse, the community started to suffer, bad soil and sick livestock making things hard for almost everyone. The notable exception is Agatha Earnshaw (Catherine Walker), who also gave birth to a daughter, Audrey (Jessica Reynolds), during that same eclipse. She has kept the existence of her daughter a secret from the others in the community, but it's getting harder to keep that secret, especially as people become more and more curious about how Agatha is managing to maintain her farm while everyone else suffers great hardship.

While there's a lot here that is very familiar, Lee makes the decision to stay away from anything that could seem too in line with more obvious horror moments or witchy imagery. There aren't any pointy hats or broomsticks here, nor even one eye of newt. There also aren't many moments that feel like a battle between witches and non-witches. As mentioned in the first paragraph, Agatha just wants to be left to get on with her life. Others around her may resent her, and they may consider her reluctance to help them as a contributing factor to their misery, but Agatha and Audrey aren't necessarily out to actively harm them. That doesn't mean that one, or both, won't eventually fight back in self-defence as the behaviour of others starts to become more confrontational and aggressive.

It's admirable that Lee takes this approach to the material, and he's helped by cinematographer Nick Thomas, among others, maintaining a brooding and oppressive atmosphere throughout. He doesn't do enough to reward the patience of viewers though, and that's particularly obvious during a hugely anti-climactic finale. There's a difference between deciding not to show too much and forgetting to show anything of interest, and Lee sadly does the latter.

Walker and Reynolds are both very good in the main roles, very good indeed (giving the kind of performances that immediately have me hoping to see them in other, better, movies), and there are a fine selection of performances from Jared Abrahamson, Hannah Emily Anderson, Geraldine O'Rawe, Don McKellar, and Sean McGinley playing other members of the community. The film simply doesn't do enough to feel deserving of their good work.

Is this bad? No. It's a decidedly okay drama with dark clouds constantly gathering overhead. Those clouds never break though, delivering neither a storm nor momentary sunshine. They're just always there, which means viewers are left with an average film that feels just like them; grey and portentous, but sadly going nowhere.

5/10

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Netflix And Chill: What Keeps You Alive (2018)

Colin Minihan may have impressed me a few times already, thanks to his work as one half of "the Vicious brothers (who gave us the fun Grave Encounters as their first feature), but I didn't realise he wrote and directed this movie until I started to sort out the full details for this review. I tend to do that, taking most movies as I find them and doing my research when it is required for reviewing purposes. That way keeps most biases at bay, in theory, and allows me to occasionally be pleasantly surprised, as I was here.

Because this is the best film yet from Minihan. It's a hard film to describe without spoiling, but I'll try anyway. I just hope that people believe me when I say that this is arguably better than a film it often calls to mind, Gone Girl (although I am due a rewatch of that one day), and should become a strong favourite for those who seek it out.

Jackie (Hannah Emily Anderson) and Jules (Brittany Allen) are a married couple looking to celebrate their one-year anniversary at a lakeside cabin. It's an isolated area, and they are surrounded by gorgeous woodlands and rocky terrain. There are also two people living nearby (Sarah, played by Martha MacIsaac, and Daniel, played by Joey Klein) who remember when Jackie was there before, when tragedy struck someone that she was very close to. Will history repeat itself? Will someone go out of their way to ensure that history repeats itself?

With his script neither patronising nor exploiting the relationship at the heart of the film, Minihan focuses on the impact that certain twists and turns have on the leads, taking some sudden moments of violence as springboards to explore how feelings can change, and just how betrayal inevitably leads to the betrayed reappraising everything that they previously assumed to be true about their current importance to a significant other. It allows the film to move like something simple and streamlined while it retains an undercurrent that examines relationships, trust, and love. The title of the movie relates to willpower, but also relates to what people seek out in order to satisfy some very dark urges.

It's hard to separate the two leads in any way, with both Anderson and Allen giving flawless performances under very different circumstances. Anderson gets to have more fun, and is an absolute standout in certain moments I won't detail here, but Allen remains convincing throughout, even as her character has to endure more and more pain. MacIsaac and Klein have just a few scenes here and there, but they both do good work in their roles.

I write reviews for my own benefit. It helps my memory of the many movies I watch when I can check out what I had to say about them, and it helps my OCD as I check out ratings/reviews while I work through lists on both IMDb and Letterboxd. But sometimes I hope a review can reach people who may seek out a film based on my praise. That has happened a couple of times this week. The first time was my review of Muscle, and now it's this review. Give it a watch, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

9/10

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Jigsaw (2017)

As much as I love the Saw series, and I do, my eyes rolled hard when I heard that they were adding to it with one more instalment (for now). Unlike many people, I was very pleased with how the last instalment had attempted to tie up numerous strands and end things on a satisfying note for fans.

Then I discovered that the Spierig brothers (Peter and Michael) were going to be involved, and I've been a fan of almost all of their previous movies. This made me tentatively optimistic. Then I saw the trailer. I was sold.

The plot is exactly what you expect from a Saw movie. A group of people come around and find that they have been unwillingly volunteered to participate in some deadly games. Everyone has a reason to be there, but will any of them be able to survive? Two detectives (Callum Keith Rennie and Cle Bennett) are on the case, and two pathologists (Matt Passmore and Hannah Emily Anderson) start their own investigation, with each party mistrusting the other.

Jigsaw delivers exactly what you want it to deliver. You get some great traps, a number of twists and turns, and editing sleight of hand that tries to keep you in the dark for as long as possible. Of course, part of the fun with these movies now comes from trying to figure out just where the trickery is taking place, not just with the traps but with the structural playfulness and the hidden character motivations. The script, by Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg (who also gave us the fun of both Piranha 3D and Sorority Row), isn't as clever as it thinks it is. Saw movie scripts seldom are, however, and it works as a gory thriller that at least attempts to avoid being as dumb as possible.

The visual palette feels similar to previous instalments, yet the Spierig brothers even manage to effect some positive changes here. You get the feeling that a lot of the environments are quite dingy, and perhaps covered with blood shed from past victims, but there's also a cool hue to many of the scenes that save it from being as relentlessly dour and murky as some of the other films.

You don't come to these movies for the acting, let's all admit that, but I'm happy to say that nobody stinks up the screen here. Rennie, Bennett, Passmore, and Anderson all have moments of being a bit over the top in acceptable ways, and Laura Vandervoort, Paul Braunstein, Mandela Van Peebles, and Brittany Allen actually do pretty solid work as some of the chosen players.

It's completely unnecessary, often a bit ridiculous, and a bit overly familiar in the many scenes that obviously nod and wink to past deathtraps . . . and I will happily buy a ticket whenever they decide to do another one, especially if it's once again helmed by the talented Spierig brothers.

8/10

Jigsaw is available to buy here.
Americans can get it here.