Pyramid Head is back on the big screen in Return to Silent Hill, Christophe Gans‘ adaptation of Konami’s revered Silent Hill 2.
Return to Silent Hill releases in theaters January 23, introducing protagonist James Sunderland, who finds his reality and sanity tested when he received a letter from lost love in the town of Silent Hill.
Actor Jeremy Irvine (“Outlander: Blood of My Blood”, Baghead) counts himself among the game’s biggest fans.
He tells Bloody Disgusting, “It was my reason for taking the job. I played it a lot when I would’ve been about 14, I think. And it had this sort of melancholy, depressing atmosphere to it, which to a 14-year-old who was growing his hair long and trying to rebel, sort of appealed to me at the time. So yeah, it had an atmosphere that really stuck with me. So, when I got the offer to play James, I just thought that 14-year-old me would find that really cool.”
Gans, who wrote the script for the new movie alongside Sandra Vo-Anh and William Josef Schneider, is taking a more faithful approach to the game this time. At least, compared to his 2006 feature, Silent Hill.
For Irvine, that means stepping into scenes lifted straight out of the games, from its iconic settings to familiar creatures. The actor cites the set piece and monster he was most excited to see brought to life on screen: “The only iconic moment is when he stops at the rest stop and he looks at himself in the mirror, and there was probably only a couple of moments where I really wanted to replicate it exactly. That was the one that I’d remembered from when I was 14, before I even read the script. They said, ‘Silent Hill,’ and I had this image of that sequence playing out.
“There was that and The Armless. We were on set the first day with The Armless, and then they said, ‘I know it’s someone in a suit,’ and then they take the head off the suit, and it’s just the most beautiful, glamorous Italian dancer. She’s like, it couldn’t be further from this revolting creature that she’s playing. So there were a couple of funny moments like that.”
While Return to Silent Hill adapts Silent Hill 2, it’s not an exact recreation; expect some deviations in the translation from video game to feature film. That includes James Sunderland.
Irvine explains, “You’ve got to make it work for the medium. So James in the game is, I mean, he’s a really interesting character, but he’s quite flat. I don’t want to say two-dimensional, but a little, he’s a sort of you as the player, you put your emotions onto him because you are playing as him. So, he’s sort of a blank canvas for the player to put their own feelings on. Whereas in a movie, you expect that to be put onto you by the person playing the character. So, I had to definitely give him some more real human emotions and up the stakes a bit with him to make him more watchable.”
One of the key differences between game James and Irvine’s version is the way the actor developed body language to signal the differences between James’ dual nature.
“I think what was fun actually, and something that I came up with was this switch between what we started calling Light James and Dark James,” Irvine says. “And there’s this moment where he goes back and there’s almost a sort of maliciousness to him. I don’t know where that idea came from, but it was a really fun thing to do, to do that switch when he goes back into Silent Hill, into the world of Silent Hill that he’s created and make him almost. Well, if you know the game, to really show how he is one of the monsters in Silent Hill. I really enjoyed that as well. That was good fun. I don’t think that’s necessarily in the game so much, but yeah, to show this mental darkness to him.”
Jeremy Irvine as James and Hannah Emily Anderson as Angela, photo credit: Cineverse
Return to Silent Hill made for one of Irvine’s toughest roles yet, due to the nature of his character’s sustained psychological duress and that he’s in nearly every scene or shot of the film, sometimes entirely by himself. But it’s one he also had a blast making, largely thanks to the cast and crew.
Irvine recalls how Gans helped him through a particularly intense scene, “Working with Cristophe is fantastic. I mean, he’s one of those visionary directors, so you never know what’s coming next with him. He’s got everything planned out, but he’s working through so much in his head. There’s a real eccentricity to him, which is very fun, and he’s also very playful. I’m scared of rats, and we did a lot of stuff filming in a sewer, and there was a scene where there was going to be loads of rats running over me, and he went out and bought himself a plastic rat that he kept putting on me. So he was a lot of fun, but some of these really creative people, they’re also slightly mad, and I think he is slightly mad in the best possible way. It’s great.”
Return to Silent Hill arrives in theaters this week; tickets are on sale now.
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