Return to Silent Hill follows James (Jeremy Irvine), a man broken after his relationship with the love of his life, Mary (Hannah Emily Anderson), ends. When a mysterious letter from her calls him back to Silent Hill, he finds a once-recognisable town transformed by an unknown evil.
While James desperately searches for Mary, he encounters terrifying creatures and begins to unravel the mystery of what happened to the town. But as he descends deeper into the darkness, the secrets he uncovers lead to a horrifying truth, and James finds himself struggling to hold on long enough to save his one true love.
Directed by Christophe Gans, who returns to the franchise after helming Silent Hill in 2006, the movie is a chilling adaptation of the beloved Silent Hill 2 video game.
Earlier this week, we sat down with Jeremy to discuss his approach to playing James Sunderland. During our conversation, we learned how the actor, who counts War Horse and Treadstone among his credits, approached the character and why, surprisingly, he's not a big fan of The Volume.
The actor also reflects on sharing scenes with Silent Hill icon Pyramid Head, the challenges that came with getting into James' headspace, and why it was important for him to revisit the games he played as a teenager before shooting this big-screen adaptation.
You can check out the interview in full below. Be sure to check back here soon for our chats with Gans, Anderson, and Evie Templeton.
Portraying James' mental deterioration, which is very much like the game, and how he mentally and physically falls apart as the story progresses, how rewarding was it to explore this arc?
Yeah, I mean, you're always looking for something to get your teeth into, and what better than someone going through a complete mental collapse and imagining while creating this incredibly dark, twisted world? Having secrets to unpack and all that. So yeah, it's what you look for as an actor.
Following this character in two time periods, in terms of what we see of his relationships in the past and how that affects what he's going through and the mystery in the present...was it useful to have that context to inform what you were doing in both time settings?
It was nice because you don't really get that as much in the game. A game doesn't instantly transfer into the medium of a film, so I think we needed a bit of light with the dark. At its heart, it's a love story told in all the parts you don't see in a romcom. We explore all those darker sides, but you need to see the light with the dark, or we're not going to understand why James is so obsessed with finding Mary again.
Something pulled straight from the games is Pyramid Head, a very iconic Silent Hill character. What were those days on set like for you? What kind of presence did he have?
It was all practical. The whole lot. All the monsters were practical; I think there was only one that wasn't. They were all played by performance artists or dancers. The nurses were an entire Serbian ballet troupe. The Armless was quite funny—one of the most horrible, disgusting creatures I remembered from playing it when I was younger. Then she takes her mask off, and it's just the most beautiful Italian dancer, a glamorous girl underneath. So yeah, it was good fun. We had a lot of laughs despite the dark material.
A film like this takes place in a different world from our own, in terms of how crazy things get in Silent Hill. I know you worked on The Volume, which must help massively compared to just blue screens. What were those days like on set, and did that help with your performance?
Luckily, we didn't do too much volume stuff because I hate it. It's an enormous, almost 360° screen that changes, but because it has to work with the camera, it moves when the camera moves. The world is moving around you, and you just get motion sick. Most of it was actually practically built sets, thank goodness, because volume stages are not my favourite thing. It's a big screen, so it's boiling hot, and you end up feeling very sick. Very hot.
Some of my favourite scenes of yours in the film were with Evie [Templeton], a really talented young actress. What was it like for you working with her as you explored the dynamic between James and Laura?
She's great. She's kind of starting off in her career now, and now she's gone rocket ship to the stars as Evie, and I'm not surprised at all. I was very lucky; I didn't have a lot of scenes with other actors because this was mostly like doing a one-man play in this movie. So I was incredibly happy whenever I had a day where there was another actor on set. Most of the time, it was just me. It was lovely to have some days with Evie and quite a few more with Hannah Emily Anderson, who plays all the different incarnations of Mary. Luckily, we all got on very well, and I had a lot of fun doing it. The days when I was just on my own were a bit of a slog.
Talking of those days on your own, given what James is going through and how isolated he is as he's exploring this town and the secrets, was that helpful for your performance?
Personally, the scenes were dark enough, so no, I probably didn't need it when the camera wasn't rolling. It was hard enough keeping up all that stuff when the camera was rolling. I definitely felt the need for a break in between takes rather than going and sitting on my own and getting more and more into a dark headspace. I was doing my very best not to fall into that black pit.
Fair enough! You mentioned playing the games, but when it came time to prepare for this, did you go back and look at them, even if just walkthroughs or cutscenes?
Yeah, I did go back. The thing I remembered, because I would have been playing this when I was about 14 or 15, so when I got the script and saw the title, I went, 'Oh.' And I remembered the feeling of playing the game rather than specific bits. This really melancholic, very atmospheric, depressing feeling that really appealed to me as a teenager going through all the teenage angst. That's what I wanted to recreate, and I think it's what Christophe Gans does so well. That's what people loved about the game—it wasn't necessarily about jump scares; it's about this very unsettling feeling you get when you play it.
Return to Silent Hill opens in theaters on Friday, January 23.