Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - Return to Silent Hill (2026)

Welcome back, midnight viewers to Father Malone's weekly round Up. I'm your host, Father Malone, and with me the anaconda to my ice cube. Miss ripley ge, how are you young? Pop? A great Harrison Ford impression.

Well, here we are, two round ups in less than a week. What the hell happened? Was the week so full of pop culture? Hell no, but I've met an executve of decision around these midnight viewing parts and decided to upend the schedule we've had for a year or two. Now Weekly Roundup has started your week with an anthology or a fest to end it, and now that's reversed.

Uno and otherwise Skip Bo is the superior card game, by the way, So hello and welcome to the New World Order. Now the other one. Hey, I finished Indiana Jones in the Great Circle. Still a terrible title, but I fucking loved the game, even though it has way too many go left, go right now, duck now jump moments, and the fucking cut scenes go on forever and you can't skip them. This isn't me being impatient.

Play the game and you'll see exactly what I mean. It got to the point where I just dropped the controller and go get a snack, see what Ripley's up to, and then come back and continue to snipe Nazis from a top ancient dig sites. In an earlier episode, I mentioned the voice actor they have replicating Harrison Ford. Well, his name is Troy Baker. I love voice actors.

Take someone who's considered a workhorse of a regular actor Michael Kane, Dennis Miller back when he was funny, had a joke about rewatching his wedding video and damn if Michael Kine isn't in it. In the flick PCU, there's a character trying to prove that at any one time there was always either a Gene Hackman film or a Michael Kine film being aired. And as much as that man has worked, he's logged in about one hundred and seventy five roles. That's TV and movies. Troy Baker has four hundred and twenty eight.

I'm sure it'll be five hundred by the time this airs. It's almost exclusively video games, but a pretty fair amount of your favorite animation for the past twenty odd years. I didn't recognize him as the voice of Conan from the Age of Conan game I've been playing, but that's two in a row. I've played with this dude subbing in for the leads, first The Sumerian and now Indiana. His Harrison Ford is uncanny, but there are moments they come one every cut scene where Indy will go from a normal speaking voice to just above a whisper.

Think of the difference between a map room, a special map room versus lightning, fire power of God or something. When Troy Baker switches tones, he becomes Patrick Warburt Putty from Seinfeld ask the eight ball. All signs point the yes. It made the cut scenes almost bearable. Did you happen to see the trailer for a Spider Man brand New Day?

Me? Neither, because it doesn't exist yet, not that that makes a fucking difference. On YouTube, type it in you'll see a dozen stretching back months and months. I could see practicing your editing skills by piecing together a trailer for a film that never was or potentially never will be, as an experiment that maybe a show has proof that you can do what you do. But there are whole channels that do just that and they get insane amounts of engagement.

There is one category of these fake trailers that I do admire. However, the ones that are so meant on convincing you that they're real that they make it look like it was footage filmed secretly at some fan event or investor screening, complete with audience whooping and shaky as fuck framing. I salute your dedication to total insanity. What else is going on? Gang?

Oh? I finally got around to reading Cosmic ghost Rider. That motherfucker has always eluded me, probably because he didn't hit the scene until twenty eighteen. I've clearly been lax when it comes to Zarathos, that is the demon inside ghost Rider, y'all. I'd done my time with Johnny Blaze and Danny Ketch and Robbie Reyis.

Somehow I couldn't bear another iteration, but fucking A, what an iteration? So far, I've only made my way through his appearances in Thanos. Thanos has his own title, and why not. He's the mad Titan with some really good ideas. This is an alternate timeline where Thanos has conquered the universe and dig this when Thanos came to Earth and slaughtered everyone.

The last of all was Frank Cassel the Punisher, and as he lay dying, he says he'd give anything to punish Thanos, and out Popshim a fisto and a deal is struck and we've got a new ghost Rider. But by the time Frank gets back from Hell, Thanos has already gone. And now ghost Rider just wanders the Earth for decades until Galactus shows up and makes a deal with Frank. If he's allowed to eat Earth, then he'll help him find Thanos. So not only is it the Punisher as ghost Rider, but now he's got the power Cosmic and he's out silver surfing with a fucking motorcycle.

Oh Andy's insane, completely lost his mind wandering lonely for all those years. I won't spoil anymore. You know you can read it right now on the Internet database. I'll throw a link in the show notes as always checked the show notes for goodies, and if you want to contact me you can do it there too, or follow midnight viewing on Insta or the other socials. Cosmic Ghostwriter has its own title now that I'm going to have to dive into, and I have a new Halloween costume aspiration.

On last week's round up, I mentioned that I was going to watch the Oscars this year because for the first time ever, a vampire movie was nominated for Best Picture. I mean, honestly, how many horror movies, nevermind monster specific have ever been nominated? Nine in ninety eight years and one win. I totally agree that the Academy has always been hashtag Oscars so white. They've also been hashtag Oscars not red enough, where's the bloodshed?

The win was Silence of the Lambs, which isn't exactly the Exorcist or sixth sense. As far as supernatural connections, which I find a necessary component for pure horror, we at least need beasts like Jaws also nominated, also didn't win. But I bring it back up here because what I failed to mention was that this is not only the first vampire film nominated, it's the first Frankenstein film as well. It's a fucking monster rally. Can we get a thoughtful, horrifying mummy out now, please?

Actually, I think one might be on the way. Maybe a new creature from the Black Lagoon make it at A twenty four. The Lagoon is the explorer's grief, where they find themselves trapped and while frightening, the creature is actually an agent of healing, making them fight their way out of the wilderness and back to the civilization. That is fine in dandy mental health. Since we're in a Frankenstein neighborhood, did you hear that Keenan Thompson and kel Mitchell have signed to do a feature called Keenan and Kell Meet Frankenstein.

Let it be good. I have total faith in them as performers, but please be at least as funny as Abbot and Costello when they met the monster themselves. That was a flick we covered in one of the first roundups. Go check that out. That is all the info we've got about that cinematic monster Forrest, But trust me, I will keep you informed.

You know, I love when movie terms or phrases work their way into everyday usage, like cut to the chase, or that's a rap. You know what one? I hate meet cute. If someone uses it now, it seems to mean a blanket statement about the moment that eventual lovers meet, which is totally incorrect. Meet cute got into the vernacular thanks to the Kate Winslet Cameron Diaz flick The Holiday by Nancy Meyer Kate Winslet befriends Eli Wallack, who's a screenwriter from the Billy Wilder days.

In fact, he's kind of based on Billy Wilder, to the point that his character introduces her to the concept of the meet cute by using a quote that Billy Wilder had given back in nineteen ninety six. In that interview and in the film, he references Bluebeard's eighth wife. Ernst Lubish's Screwball comedy from nineteen thirty eight, in which two characters meet while shopping for pajamas. One is seeking a pajama top and the other a pajama bottom. They meet in a cute manner.

Hey, Joe, this is my cousin Lisa. Nice to meet you, Lisa. That's not a meet cute. That's a meeting. This next one isn't a movie term, but it's one.

I really enjoy the law of diminishing returns. I'm sure you're familiar with the phrase where the product output remains the same, but the productivity and efficiency decrease the longer you add product, only the more watered down the results. Like the hell Raiser films. Those are eleven movies. We seem to get one every four years, and every four years, everyone's attention and patience with the series waned just that much harder.

Why am I talking about film phrases and economic theories because I had both on the brain while watching the latest indie Silent Hill film franchise, Return to Silent. Hill, James, so much time has passed. Something's happened. Please come back to our place very hello. You did anyone have me?

You're not from here, are you? I'm looking for someone. Everyone got sick and silent Hell. You really never heard about any of this, Jans. You have to get to her before it's too late.

You did it, didn't you, Jimmy. You woke him up? Oh the darkness? You come to keep it the. Whish.

No one said it would be easy. What you're doing. It won't be enough to save her. You don't know what comin of a pole. You have to face.

Mary. They keep telling me to move on, no matter what it takes. I won't let go. I mentioned over on trek Fest that I had a buddy make a film back in the nineties, and that was at lions Gate, So I ended up spending a lot of time during post production hanging around with a couple of executive types at the time. I think a Son in Law had just come out, or maybe this was in the Army.

Now I'm naming Polly Shore movies. He'd already been on MTV for years, so he had recognition, but I couldn't imagine he had an audience big enough to justify a series of films. The executive I was asking about it told me this, that's what the movie industry is, from Universal down to Troma. It's all the law of averages. In the Army now or son in law aren't going to do Beverly Hills cop money, but no one's shooting for blockbuster.

They're putting up a three or four million dollar budget and pulling in between twenty and thirty million. Why not put a polyshorre movie out every year, because eventually you make Jury Duty with a budget of twenty one million and a seventeen million dollar return. Notice there's only one flick after that, Biodome, and that was already in production before Jury Duty was released. And thus Silent Hill not wildly profitable, but enough enough to keep the business model going. Each successive film made with a lower budget and pulling in lower box office, but always commensurate with each other.

These movies make about double their budget theatrically, and then home video and streaming and syndication rights are all gravy. That might end here with a budget of twenty three million, and it grows so far of three. I brought up meet cute because that's how this film begins, only it's more of a meat hideous or a meat idiotic. Really, forgive the opening scene play by play, but it's important. Our hero, James Sunderland played by Jeremy Irvine.

He's the kind to drive his Mustang at super unsaved speeds through winding roads of a mountainous pass while rocking out to some tunes and lighting up a joint, and then nearly kill a pedestrian when he overcreaks from a head on collision he almost caused through carelessness. I'm not really loving our lead here, but hey, maybe that's the point. He misses Mary Crane played by Hannah Emily Anderson, but clips a piece of her luggage, sending her belongings raining down all over the highway because her luggage wasn't on the sidewalk where the bus stop is located. No, it's out in the street. It gets better.

They gather her clothing. Her bus arrives, She jumps in front of the bus to make it stop, as if it's leaving and not arriving, and then he drops a piece of luggage. Some more clothing spills out. She looks at the easily scooped up clothing, and then looks at the bus driver and shrugs and waves him on, as if it won't be possible to get it together before the bus that has just stopped has to get back on the road, and it does, stranding her with him. Aren't they meeting cute?

No, this is fucking stupid on every level, and it's the opening. I hate our lead. Our co lead is clearly an imbecile. And now let's follow them through the rest of the movie. Recently I heard someone describe the best horror movies the really memorable stood the test of time.

Fright flicks work as well as they do because if you were to remove the horror element, you'd still be interested in the story being told. The characters are strong and relatable, or they can be terrible and unapproachable, but it's got to be more than the same bullshit we've been getting for one hundred years of cinema while we wait for the fun to begin. So does it? It does in much the same manner it didn't Silent Hill back in two thousand and six. That film was directed by Christophe Gans, an a tour I noticed in ninety three he directed a segment of a Lovecraft horror anthology called Necronomicon Book of the Dead, starring Jeff Combs as Lovecraft.

He directed the first segment, the Drowned, and I remember at the time, I'm thinking, Holy fuck, what kind of a budget did this movie have? And then as the rest of the story is unfolded, I thought, man, they must have spent the entire budget on that first segment. Nope, that was just Gans showing off what a fucking phenomenal visual stylist he is. He makes pictures as pretty as Zack Snyder or Michael Bay. I know they suck, but they make gorgeous films and you can't deny that they have an absolute mastery of every technical detail of filming and they know where to put the fucking camera.

That mastery was fully on display in two thousand and one when Gans made Brotherhood of the Wolf, a horror fantasy martial arts period piece set against the legend of the Beast of Givodan. I'm not pronouncing that correctly, but I'm also not gonna try. And that was the region of France where from seventeen sixty four until seventeen sixty seven there were roughly two hundred attacks by wolves, resulting in between sixty to one hundred deaths. They sent in packs of dogs, they sent in the Royal Guard, they sent in dragoons. Nothing worked.

Finally, a father son hunting duo took down the alpha wolf with its mate and pups, eventually subdued as well. Ganz turned that into a fable about a French warrior and his Iroquois sidekick as they hunt down a creature that's been weaponized by a secret society. It's a cuckoo, crazy direction to take what is essentially the ghost and the darkness. Remember that Killer Lion flick with Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas. Gans seemed the perfect choice to helm the initial Silent Hill, particularly because he'd been lobbying Konami since the game's released to do just that.

He initially wanted to adapt Silent Hill too as the first feature, but was dissuaded because of how personalized the second game's gameplay was. The first film gave a broader story with a fairly easy to follow origin for the town and its resolution. There's a cult and a ritual that resulted in a character bisecting and becoming a dark and light version of themselves, and thus Silent Hill becomes bisected. Two towns existing at the same time in the same space. Gee.

I wonder if the Duffer brothers ever played these games or saw these movies. The second game posited a Silent Hill as the manifestation of each individual character's guilt or sadness or longing one character. Silent Hill is not necessarily the same for another, kind of hard to lock down an overall mythology when it's different every which way you turn. So instead they adapted the first game. I don't know what your mileage is on that first film.

I liked it overall. When it becomes dark Silent Hill, it was like a Francis Bacon painting coming to life. And there are genuine moments of dread, that army of smoldering mutant children chasing her down, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and it has Alice Kreese, Ah, Alice Kreese, tune into our trek Fest first Contact episode that'll be on the Patreon by the time you hear this. I fucking love Alice Kreese. I say that a lot on the roundup.

I love her, or I love her or I love her. But Alice Kreese is the perfect example the platonic ideal of sexy scary. She's weird and aloof while simultaneously earthy and sensual, and she's beautiful, and she's fucking frightening. Man. Go check out Ghost Story, a not very good movie with an excellent, chilling early Alice Kreese performance.

On the flip side, Silent Hill is fronted by Roda Mitchell, who was an eight girl for ten minutes in the early two thousands before everyone realized she's a chunk of lead emotionally and is wildly unappealing as a lead. Did everyone realize that Maybe that's wishful thinking on my part. I can't stand her. Should have cast anyone else? Maybe they could have given the lead to Sean Bean, who plays her husband, And had they adapted the game directly, that would have been the case.

That game follows a character named Harry Mason as he tries to find his missing daughter in Silent Hill. They not only gender swapped, they made her a new character entirely. I have no problem with dispensing with a character or modifying them when they make the leap from one medium to another. I actually think it's a solid idea when it comes to gaming crossovers because it allows a level of remove for the gamer while changing nothing in the minds of a moviegoer who's never even held a controller. Gans mentioned that as one of the reasons for the change, but then he went further.

He gave an interview at the time of filming where he said this about he and his fellow writers, one of whom is Roger Avery, co writer of Pulp Fiction and writer of Killing Zoe and Rules of Attraction. I'm not saying this to call out Rojeriavi. I'm just saying that he was involved in this film, but I think all of his contributions were positive. Anyway, here's ganz quote. We assumed, because we are fans of the game, that we would start writing with Harry Mason as our lead.

It quickly became clear, however, Harry never acted like a masculine character. He was constantly dizzy, fainting, talking to himself, screaming, and in fact was very vulnerable. We didn't want to betray the nature of the game by changing the character's feelings and motivations, so we felt it was better to change to a female protagonist and retain all of those important qualities dizzy, fainting and vulnerable. That's you, ladies. It's a super weird sentiment considering the look of Silent Hill.

The breathtaking, horrifying, stomach churning world that is the reason the movie works at all was created by production designer Carol Speier. She's also Cronenberg's designer. I liked how feminine that first film was. They in fact had to add the Sean Being character last minute because executives complained the movie was all female. The hero is a woman, the villain is a woman.

Pyramidhead is just a manifestation of the missing daughter, So Alice Creese is the one actually pulling the strings here, making the script itself at odds with Gan's twentieth century notions on the traits of the fomb Ganz stepped away from the series, so Silent Hill Revelations in three D with CeNSE, year round and boredom. Bafflers was directed by Michael J. Bassett, although she goes by MJ. Bassett these days. She continues to be a prolific TV director.

But before this film she made Solomon Kane, which I reviewed here on the Roundup. I like that movie. She also put out that Red Sonia flick last year, which I gave as much time to discussing as I will Silent ill Revelations. In fairness, she had a tough road to home by trying to make a direct sequel to the first film while simultaneously trying to make Silent Hill three. It's unwieldy and contradictory and just not as freaky as the first.

But as far as diminishing returns go, it's not such a precipitous dump that I wouldn't recommend it. The first film's visuals were able to carry it home. Same here. That was in twenty twelve, thirteen years later, fourteen. Actually it's twenty twenty six now, and suddenly Gan's initial dream has come true.

He's back in the writer director chair. No ivery this time. He's got podcasting to do, and he's adapting Silent Hill too, which is how that game's protagonist ends up meeting cute with Mary Crane in the opening of Return to Silent Hill. Has there ever been a you know? And I just answered it in my head it's Return of the Jedi.

I was gonna say, Has there ever been a sequel that starts with Return of That's any good? I might be thinking of TV movies Return of a Man Called Horse, Return of Ironside, Return from the River. Kwai, that's a real thing. Anyway. That meet cute ends up being a dream that James Sunderland is having while drunk in a bar in Boston, is what I'm guessing from his car's license plate, And I thought, oh, thank god, it was just some reverie.

James comes to in a fairly gritty version of the world and a fairly gritty version of himself, although no amount of grit can cover up the pretty boy model looks of our lead. He's half Jared Padlicky, half Casper van Deen, although he's way more charismatic than Johnny Rico and way less so than Sam Winchester. But no, that wasn't a dream. It was a flashback all that mediocrity actually occurred. If you've played Silent Hill too, then you've seen this movie.

You in fact experienced against the character, feeling the fear as you navigate through the fog and avoid the creepers. So you're way ahead of the average moviegoer here, because with only a few deviations in plot, this is that game, except it's rather maddening and not in the good This foul place is warping my perception way. He meets several characters during the course of the film, and just like the game, they all act like NPC's just breadcrumbing him along. Anyone on Earth who'd been away from a place for a few years and returned to find its roadways blocked off and then the town itself abandoned and under a constant coat of constantly floating ash. Wouldn't be so cavalier to continue blindly fumbling around a town and not press a resident for every bit of information you could.

This is a ninety minute film. We better get going with the storytelling about Silent Hill, except we spent and an even greater amount of time in those flashbacks to when the town was fine. You know where the cliched, boring story lives. All the while delivering head slapping contradictions. James suggests to Mary that he moved to Silent Hill to be with her, and she tells him no, he'd be bored.

There are no museums, no culture. And in the next scene in Silent Hill, he meets a group of her friends at a chic nightclub filled with the types of posers who lurk in the pages of Brett Easton Ellis novels. I was convinced for half of the film that one of them was Tilda Swinton. She's not. I'm sorry, Tilda, but I had to try and convince myself there was something good going on here.

By wave example, let's take a trip to toxicology. Fans of the game know that if you're in the hospital, the toxicology wing is something to avoid. The nurses lurk there. If there's a character as iconic as pyramid Head, Red Pyramid is his name in the film, they call him triangle Head in Japan, it's the nurses. You've seen them, two tight, grubby uniforms, faces, just a swirl of flesh, bone white and frozen in place unless you make a noise or shine a light on them.

Those things attract them, and they'll stab and slice until the sound is gone and the light is dead. I love the nurses. I think they're the coolest thing to come out of the game. I'm sure there have been haunted attractions based on Silent Till, but I have not had the opportunity to go, and I'm glad. Honestly, I know if I ended up in a room full of those nurses, I would come immediately.

Each film gives us one scene with the nurses. In the first, Rose runs into them about three quarters of the way through the film, and there are dozens of them, all blocking further progress down a hallway. Her flashlight brings them to life and staggering toward her, swinging their scalpels wildly. What follows is a tense, genuinely frightening sequence where she tries not to make a noise. It's a scene worthy of any of those mission impossible flicks.

In the second film, Young John snow Kit Harrington is strapped to a gurney and wheeled into an or that doubles as a nurse statuary. Less of them here, but the stakes are the same. Trying to get yourself unshackled while making no noise is remarkably difficult, and the scene starts pretty promising, but then it's over before it began still good enough, there was no guarantee that they'd even be in this film. I avoided advertising like the Plague, and I'm glad I did. I might have waited till video and not spent my actual money.

So when our boy James and Angela or Mary or Maria or Alessa or whatever burst into the room and there they are, you can imagine I was pretty fucking excited. And now the architect of that first film has twenty years of film experience, this is going to be fucking great, and it starts that way. There are more nurses than you can count in here, and behind them there seems to be another room filled with them. And when they first enter, their flashlight falls on one that's slumped across a metal gurney. She doesn't rise.

She starts banging a hammer on the gurney, and that's a drum beat that keeps these ladies moving, regardless of what the victims are doing. But then almost immediately it ended up turning into what most horror characters do after they've been absorbed and regurgitated by the mainstream, it becomes an action film. That's what we have, running down hallways as hundreds of nurses and entire hospital of nurses come flooding down the hall. I say flooding, but they're in high heels, so they're actually hobbling along. It's all very inelegant and not at all tense.

And in the end it's Sunderland swinging a pipe and breaking their skulls open like porcelain dolls, like so many faceless James Bond Henchman as he waits for an elevator door to close. Not scary, not sexy, not frightening, just kind of there, like the rest of the flick. I mentioned how closely this film hues to the video game, and boy does it, including our lead constantly becoming paralyzed with fright or cowering from creatures instead of running away or killing them. He also does quite a bit of head and hands writhing on the ground and screaming why do you have to make them so feminine crease stuff? And why did I have to watch this?

So you don't have to, but I'm sure you will when it's streaming and you can see it for free. But trust me, you're still going to fell ripped off dust off your copies of the PlayStation game. They even remade Part two a couple of years ago. You will be far better served. And if you have to watch a movie version, rewatch the original.

I did after watching this, and now I'm a big admirer of the film, whereas before I thought it was a bit half baked. This week I had intended to review that new Anaconda movie with Jack Black and Paul Rudd. I saw it, but this Silent Hill diatribe got a bit out of hand. So maybe next week. If not, it's terrible worse, then return to Silent Hell.

Tune in this coming Monday, Mike White is back to talk Hammerhouse of Horror with me. We're taking on the House that Bled to Death, perhaps the most infamous episode of the series. You can hear that right now and the next two episodes of Hammer House on the Patreon channel. Not only do you get stuff early there, but you get exclusives like our continuing Moranas fest, where HP and I are going through the filmography of mister Rick moranis in anticipation of the upcoming space Balls movie. That is also where you can hear my collaboration with Paul Waller from a Year in Horror podcast.

We do a show called A Little Old Lady Got Mutilated de late last night. It's about werewolves. So far you can hear us jabber about the Wolfman and Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman and Curse of the Werewolf with Oliver Reed. We've got the Howling there and most recently we've recorded an American Werewolf in London. I think we're doing Silver Bullet next.

I'm a little too old to be playing hardy boys meet River and Werewolf Gary Busey in his last coachin performance and patrons get to force me to watch something. So far, we've done Night on Earth. We just recorded Labyrinth. We've got a few more in the works. Shout out to Jason Jeffers on the Patreon.

What do you want to see? Jason? Let me know fallom malone seven one at a gmail dot com. That's where you can all reach me for Ripley, Jean, I'm father alone. Try to enjoy the daylight.

Everybody, sincerely,