The Silent Hill franchise has stood the test of time for many reasons, not least of which being the haunting, ethereal soundscapes of these survival horror games. And when it came to adapting Silent Hill to film, perhaps the smartest thing director Cristophe Gans did was make sure that series composer Akira Yamaoka was still involved.
Now Silent Hill is back in theaters with the third film in the series, Return to Silent Hill, and Yamaoka is along for the ride again. IGN was recently able to speak with Yamaoka about his work, how composing a Silent Hill movie is very different from the games, and which game he’d like to see adapted next. Read on to see what he had to say. [Note – this interview was performed with the aid of a translator.]
Return to Silent Hill is effectively an adaptation of the Silent Hill 2 game. What makes Yamaoka’s involvement interesting is that this is effectively the third time he’s worked on this particular soundtrack. He scored the original Silent Hill 2 back in 2002, and he rebuilt his work from the ground up for the 2024 remake. Now he’s tackling that soundtrack from a whole new angle for the film version.
Yamaoka explains to IGN that there’s a fundamental difference between scoring for games and scoring for film. One is an interactive medium where the other is linear, and that makes a profound difference.
“One of the major differences between video games and film is, as you know, film is a linear format as opposed to video games, [which are] an interactive format where people have choices,” Yamaoka tells IGN. “People with a controller can decide how they experience the story. We have to create the music and all the elements to be interactive so that it can follow how the player plays the games.”
Yamaoka continues, “But the film is, of course, different; it’s a linear format. So what that means is everybody would watch the music at certain scenes, and so it’s very much predictable, or it’s more pre-decided, because that’s what the film experience is. That gives me the opportunity to create a much deeper emotional experience, something that we can have even deeper and sharper creative intent for each moment. That to me is a very different opportunity that I was given compared to video games.”
We asked Yamaoka if there were any particular themes or motifs from Silent Hill 2 he was eager to explore and rearrange for Return to Silent Hill, to which he pointed to a pair of classic songs.
“There are many songs that came from the games, such as ‘Theme of Laura’ and ‘Promise.’ And again, as we discussed earlier, linear format film is different from video games, so that allows us to have music for certain emotional effects that the director would like to share with the audience. To create the experience, we were able to change the tempo and spot, really just specifically have the music in a certain way at the tempo and the tone and tension and temperature so that it would support the specific scene. That is a really just wonderful opportunity that we have for the film. It’s much more than the length of the scenes, or maybe just the format of the scenes, but it’s just the opportunity that we have to be much more, have a micro-control, specific control to have an emotional delivery. So naturally, I enjoy the process of rearranging the themes, and again, including ‘Theme of Laura’ and ‘Promise’ and other music that came from the games to be very film-specific so that we could deliver the emotional message and vision that Christophe Gans had.”
Yamaoka makes it clear that Gans had a very specific vision for how he wanted his sequel to sound. That included selecting certain themes and songs from other games in the Silent Hill series. It was all about furthering the director’s vision for the film.
“It was a creative vision that the director had, because, of course, he focuses on the emotion and he focuses on how to deliver it” Yamaoka says. “There are certain songs from other Silent Hills that had a very good fit for what he was trying to achieve. And of course, it was not one-directional. It was a communication process where the director and myself had to come to the conclusion that there are maybe certain scenes where we could use different music.”
One of the elements that separates Return to Silent Hill from the source material is that the film includes a series of flashbacks exploring the romance between James Sunderland (Jeremy Irvine) and Mary (Hannah Emily Anderson). We were curious how Yamaoka wanted to take advantage of that new material and explore a relatively happier period for these characters.
“That’s one of the very unique elements of the film, and we had a great creative opportunity to discuss this with the director,” Yamaoka says. “When I saw it, I first tried to approach it in a melancholic way, reading towards romantic music and realized that this is an impossible approach. I had a chance to share this with Christophe Gans and run it by him. He gave me really wonderful feedback, and he suggested that maybe we can shift the direction to a different way, so then I tried that direction.”
Yamaoka continues, “So it was very much a communicative, very creative process and a communication process that we had that, after the impression that I received, I ran the idea by him sometimes by presenting the music to the scenes already. We just had many of our creative thoughts, so we exchanged our ideas a lot. So it was very much a collaborative process, and I really enjoyed it.”
Finally, there’s the question of what the future might hold for the Silent Hill movie series. To date, the films have mostly adapted material from the original three games. Assuming a fourth is greenlit at some point, what game would Yamaoka like to see adapted next?
“Of course, I’d really love to see other Silent Hills become filmed, but if I were to pick one, maybe I would say Silent Hill 4: The Room, because it’s the unique Silent Hill in that it was a first-person game experience. And also, the setting is very different from the previous Silent Hills from Silent Hill 1 to 3, which has been transported to a different town, but Silent Hill 4 is different. So naturally, the nature of Silent Hill is different, but still the creative essence – the experience itself – stays the same. So I think it has a wonderful opportunity to become a film and provide the core elements and experience within Silent Hill. And I certainly hope that it’ll be directed by Christophe Gans. He’s just really wonderful, and I really hope that we have a chance to collaborate on that too, if we have the opportunity.”
Return to Silent Hill hits theaters on January 23. Check out IGN’s Return to Silent Hill review for more on the new film.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.
