The New Silent Hill Reboot Should Take A Page From Resident Evil
Why look to the past when you could imagine a new, fog-shrouded future?
While the highest-grossing films of 2026 so far are massive blockbusters like Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey, it’s impossible to overlook just how much horror has dominated the box office. Much has been said about the overwhelming success of Obsession and Backrooms, but even other films, like Send Help and Scream 7, have made this yet another lucrative year for the genre.
But movie theaters aren’t the only place where horror is winning big; the genre has also had a rewarding 2026 in gaming. Resident Evil: Requiem, the series’ ninth mainline title, came out in February and sold over eight million copies, while the upcoming Silent Hill: Townfall and Hellraiser: Revival are sure to be moneymakers, too. That’s a lesson Hollywood will certainly be paying attention to: Zach Cregger’s new Resident Evil reboot film is tracking to become the highest-grossing film in the franchise, and Hollywood is undoubtedly planning more survival horror game adaptations… including a cinematic reboot of a beloved franchise that could stand to emulate Cregger’s approach.
Be prepared for a new wave of survival horror adaptations after the opening weekend Resident Evil just had.
According to a Wall Street Journal profile, producer Roy Lee (Resident Evil, A Minecraft Movie) is developing a reboot of the Silent Hill franchise. Based on the critically acclaimed and influential video game series, the games have already received three separate live-action films: 2006’s Silent Hill, directed by Christophe Gans and based on the original 1999 game, 2012’s Silent Hill: Revelation, directed by M.J. Bassett and based on the third game, and this year’s Return to Silent Hill, once again directed by Gans and based on Silent Hill 2, which is widely considered one of the best games of all time. While each was met with varying degrees of negative critical reviews, they were all moderately successful at the box office, and the first has become something of a cult classic.
The original game followed Harry Mason, a father searching for his adopted daughter in the town of Silent Hill, who’s drawn into a mystery involving a sinister cult known as The Order and the reality warping that keeps shifting the town into a nightmarish alternate dimension known as the Otherworld. While each game follows a new protagonist and story, they’re linked narratively and thematically by the Otherworld, which manifests and changes based on the pain and trauma of Silent Hill’s inhabitants. The original game’s Otherworld was a manifestation of the suffering of Alessa, a young girl badly burned during an Order ritual gone wrong; the second game introduced James Sunderland, and the Otherworld transforms Silent Hill based on the guilt James feels over secretly euthanizing his terminally ill wife.
Despite being a “direct adaptation” of the first game, 2006’s Silent Hill played fast and loose with the lore, like prematurely introducing the iconic Pyramid Head.
While some fans objected to Zach Cregger’s decision to tell a brand-new Resident Evil story with an original character, the Silent Hill franchise is perfectly suited to that approach, because most of the games already function as stand-alone installments. With the exception of Silent Hill 3, which is a sequel to the original, and Silent Hill: Origins, which is a prequel to the original, every game follows a different story and set of characters, and modern releases have even taken place outside of the small American town, implying that the Otherworld can be tethered to different locations.
While the previous films opted for straightforward adaptations of the games, the basic premise of Silent Hill — that psychological trauma can manifest as inhuman monsters and a horrific alternate realm — is the perfect justification for telling a brand-new story. Unlike Resident Evil, which has built up a consistent ensemble of fan-favorite characters like Leon Kennedy, the only real recurring “main character” throughout the Silent Hill series is the town itself, which opens the door for any talented horror filmmaker to craft their own vision of the Otherworld based on the mental scars of a new character. Zach Cregger just brought Resident Evil to new cinematic heights with a reboot that forged a fresh path, proving it’s often better to bring something original to the table instead of trying to imitate a story already told perfectly the first time around.
