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Silent Hill 2‘s legendary antagonist, Pyramid Head, is finally headed back to the big screen, and audiences caught their first glimpse of the geometric monstrosity this week when the film previewed at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
Directed by Christophe Gans (who also directed the first Silent Hill film back in 2006), Return To Silent Hill is the third film in the Silent Hill franchise, and is also considered to be a reboot of sorts. The first two films drew inspiration from various Silent Hill games and included some of the series’ most well-known characters. However, neither 2006’s Silent Hill nor 2012’s Silent Hill: Revelation were true adaptations of one specific Silent Hill game, but rather amalgamations of them. Return To Silent Hill, on the other hand, is aiming to be a faithful adaptation of Konami’s 2001 horror masterpiece, Silent Hill 2.
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“There is a clear idea from Christophe to make it modern, but also very true to the video game… Christophe is really somebody that respects the work that has been done, but that also has his own vision,” said Victor Hadida, who served as a producer on the first two Silent Hill films.
Jeremy Irvine stars as protagonist James Sunderland, a tortured man who returns to Silent Hill–the site of his honeymoon–after receiving a letter from his wife, Mary, requesting he meet her there. There’s just one problem: Mary has been dead for three years. In the 2001 game, Pyramid Head appears as a monstrous representation of James’ guilty conscience, and based on a still from the upcoming film (via Variety), Gans’ interpretation of the enigmatic horror stays true to its source material. Pyramid Head can be seen standing behind the rusted, bent bars of a metal door, lugging a sword so enormous, even Cloud Strife would blush.
This is exactly how players first meet Pyramid Head in the original Silent Hill 2 game–during his first appearance, the metal barricade mercifully keeps him at a safe distance from James, but the encounter is a harrowing one nonetheless, and the metal bars certainly don’t keep the menacing creature at bay after the initial encounter.
Fans will likely be pleased to know that Gans is aiming for accuracy with the new film, but the real litmus test for the film’s authenticity may be the opinion of Masahiro Ito, the original art director for Team Silent and creator of Pyramid Head’s frightening design. While promoting the 2006 film, Gans claimed that Pyramid Head is “one of the executioners in the original history of the town,” adding that “There is not one particular or exclusive manifestation of him as an entity.”
Ito, however, strongly disagreed, taking issue with the first two films’ use of Pyramid Head as an all-purpose boogeyman who can terrorize any character he pleases.
“[The filmmakers] really misunderstood Pyramid Head,” Ito said of the film. “I designed that only for James.”
Ito later added that Pyramid Head’s background as an executioner was inspired by a background character from 1995’s Braveheart, and has been quite vocal about his distaste for Pyramid Head’s appearances in plotlines that do not include James Sunderland as a character. Ito has even gone as far as claiming that he regrets creating the character.
Return To Silent Hill does not yet have an official release date, but the film is set to release sometime in 2024. Similarly, a remake of the original Silent Hill 2 game is currently being developed by Bloober Team, and is also set to launch sometime this year, meaning Pyramid Head fans have plenty to look forward to.
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