By most standards – critical reception, Metacritic scores, becoming a witness with your own two eyes – there's never been a good Silent Hill film adaptation. Maybe it's that the anxiety of Konami's 1999 survival horror series is too lived-in to translate to a more passive, movie theater popcorn experience, or maybe it's because none of them can replicate the singularity of the film that inspired Silent Hill in the first place, Fatal Attraction director Adrian Lyne's 1990 horror movie Jacob's Ladder.
I'm inclined to believe the latter. With its new 4K restoration and theatrical re-release in the US, it's clear to me that the phantasmagorical paranoia of Jacob's Ladder remains at the heart of Silent Hill, even after decades of franchise flops and reinvention – and future Silent Hill installments, including the next scheduled Silent Hill movie, better not forget it.
