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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Netflix And Chill: Baghead (2023)

I'm not accusing anybody here of plagiarism, we all know that creative film people can have similar ideas that end up suffering when released too close to some other, superior, outing, but if I told you that Baghead is a horror movie based around the idea of people being able to talk to the dead for a very limited amount of time, as long as they follow certain rules, then you may well think of another film that was released in the past couple of years. And if you haven't seen Talk To Me yet, I recommend that ahead of this one. I recommend many films ahead of this one, but Talk To Me is the one it most closely resembles, superficially.

Based on the short film of the same name, written by Lorcan Reilly, this is the tale of Iris (Freya Allan), a young woman who ends up taking over a pub from her estranged, and no-longer-on-the-mortal-coil, father (Owen, played by Peter Mullan). She isn't supposed to be the new owner though. It contains something dark and dangerous underground, an entity that can apparently channel the spirits of the dead, becoming them for a limited time. Iris and her friend, Katie (Ruby Barker), are wary, of course, but also think there's a way to make some money when someone (Neil, played by Jeremy Irvine) offers to pay them for a chance to speak to a deceased loved one. I am sure everything will work out well, as long as people abide by the specific rules that they're told about and don't have any dark secrets to be revealed.

Directed by Alberto Corredor, his feature debut after helming the short back in 2017, this is a competent and serviceable film. It's also tiresomely dull, especially when things play out in the finale in a way that feels completely unoriginal and unsurprising. Lorcan Reilly has continued to work on short movies, which leaves the full screenplay for this in the hands of another first-timer, Christina Pamies, and Bryce McGuire (who gave us the inexorably dull Night Swim in the same year, oh dear). Pamies and McGuire are not good enough to turn the central idea into something worthwhile, which leaves the cast adrift in a cold sea of mediocrity.

Allan is a good lead, although she already has a knack for picking projects that don't make good use of her talent. She gamely struggles through this, despite the writers giving viewers very little actual character development aside from how she has been defined by the fates of her parents. Barker is also better than the material allows, and both actresses deserve much more than the slop they're served here. Mullan, only in a few scenes, is always a welcome presence, and Ned Dennehy is a good fit for the solicitor who helps the pub transition from one owner to the next. Jeremy Irvine, on the other hand, isn't very good. He struggles to play his character as required, and his discomfort as he wrestles to do good work, contributes to the weakness of a finale that everyone involved probably thought was a fantastic, clever, and satisfying ending. 

I feel a bit unkind here, but maybe that is the way it has to be. While not terrible in any way, this is dull. And, as many people have said many times over, being dull is one of the worst things for a movie to be. Give me something to love, give me something to hate, but don't give me something to shrug off and forget about within a minute of the end credits rolling. That inability to make any strong impression makes the good work done by some of those involved simply redundant. Am I going to praise the score by Suvi-Eeva Äikäs, the cinematography by Cale Finot, or the production design and makeup? No . . . because they've faded away from my mind quicker than the serious and unbreakable rules faded from the minds of the main characters in this tale.

3/10

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War Horse (2011)

This Steven Spielberg movie, based on a popular play written by Nick Stafford which was based on the children's book by Michael Morpurgo, is an easy target for critics to take aim and fire at. There's no denying that it has many moments that exemplify the very worst of Spielberg's predilections and there will be many people for whom this is just absolute anathema. Nevertheless, I quite enjoyed it.

Peter Mullan plays Ted Narracott, a farmer who doesn't really have much luck in life. Mind you, he doesn't always help himself, like when he decides to outbid his landlord (David Thewlis) for a horse that everyone knows will be of no use to him for ploughing purposes. He gets the horse, but is also indebted to his landlord. It looks grim, grim indeed, but his son, Albert (Jeremy Irvine), has faith in the horse and sets out to prove everyone wrong by leading it around the field and getting it to pull the plough. Sadly, despite the horse showing great tenacity, there's not enough done to keep the farm safe and so Ted sells the horse to an army Captain (Tom Hiddleston). Albert is determined that they'll be reunited one day and he signs up for the army as soon as he's old enough, but there's no guarantee that he'll ever actually see his horse again or, indeed, survive the perils of war.

Yes, it's overloaded with sentiment in places (thanks to Spielberg and the music of John Williams) and yes, there are too many shots with rays of sunlight just providing an aura for the lead characters, thanks to cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, but this is still an enjoyable family adventure that will take you through a range of emotions before the end credits roll.

The best thing about it is the quality of the cast. As well as those already mentioned (Mullan, Thewlis, Irvine, Hiddleston), viewers gets to see the following actors in a variety of small and large roles: Emily Watson, Niels Arestrup, Benedict Cumberbatch, Geoff Bell, Eddie Marsan, Toby Kebbell and Liam Cunningham. Even the lesser-known (and unknown) cast members do a great job, with Celine Buckens making a good impression as young Emilie, a girl who also makes a connection with the titular horse.

There are one or two moments of darker content in the movie, but they're handled with kid gloves and moved aside in plenty of time for the next uplifting sequence. People will accuse the movie of being far too sugary and heavy-handed for its own good and it is, but it's also just a nice, old-fashioned adventure story with plenty of great moments throughout.

7/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Horse-Blu-ray-Region-Free/dp/B00742SSEW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356070669&sr=8-1