Here’s Who Should Direct The New SILENT HILL Movie

Japanese horror master Kiyoshi Kurosawa usually tops people's lists when asked who they want to direct an atmospherically accurate, downright terrifying Silent Hill movie, and all it takes is that one scene from his 2001 techno-horror Pulse to convince you if you're not already on board.

The Cure director also helped spawn another legendary survival horror series (his 1989 film Sweet Home directly inspired the OG Resident Evil), so it makes total sense to have him at the helm to resurrect Silent Hill.

However, the ever-cerebral Kurosawa isn't a director known for tackling IP, much preferring to craft his own original stories, many of which are removed from horror entirely. If his 2024 short Chime is anything to go by, though, he still has a natural knack for unbearable tension, effortless existential dread, and nightmare-inducing sound design. Give this man the keys to the kingdom, ASAP.

Some of us clocked Damian McCarthy as the right person for a Silent Hill movie back in 2020 with his horrifying debut, Caveat, and now the recent Hokum is convincing more and more people that the Irish filmmaker is the man for the job.

With just three films under his belt, McCarthy has shown he can spin a mean mystery that feels spiritually akin to the world of Silent Hill, particularly when it comes to crafting a supporting cast of weirdo characters who all seem hellbent on making the protagonist's ordeal even creepier than it already is.

The McCarthy Extended Universe is also full of little trinkets and tchotchkes (Caveat‘s Bunny, Oddity‘s weird wooden man, etc.) that could easily be part of a Silent Hill character's totally bizarre quest to unlock a door or something, much like when Silent Hill 3‘s Heather had to collect a pork liver and a matchbook to proceed through the Hilltop Center. Video game logic – can't beat it!

They might be scary, but many of the Silent Hill games are also unbearably sad, and nobody does heartstring-pulling horror quite like Mike Flanagan. A Flanagan-helmed Silent Hill miniseries would allow the monologue-loving director the chance to flesh out the inhabitants of the foggy nightmare world, making their eventual descent into torment hit hard.

Flanagan is adept at slow-burn scares that are rooted in metaphor and flourish in subtlety (although the man can also deliver a mean jump scare), and has shown himself to be the man to beat when it comes to putting a unique spin on existing stories.

Not to mention, he has a whole crew of creative collaborators who would fit right into the Silent Hill universe. Samantha Sloyan as Dahlia Gillespie- anyone? Kate Siegel as Lisa Garland? Or Rahul Kohli as Harry Mason? We'd be sat, Day One.

Religious themes, slow-burn scares, trauma-affected visuals, one of the most disturbing endings this side of Martyrs? Yep, Saint Maud definitely established Rose Glass as a director who'd do wonders with the Silent Hill name.

While a far cry from horror, Glass' sophomore feature, Love Lies Bleeding, includes snippets of the grotesque seen throughout the Silent Hill series, and further cements her as a filmmaker we'd love to see put a spin on the town's psychological nightmare.

Japanese director Yûta Shimotsu may not be as widely recognized as some of the other names on this list, but if you've seen his FANGORIA Chainsaw Award-nominated feature debut, Best Wishes to All, you'll know he has a keen grasp of the uncanny style of horror needed to ace a Silent Hill movie.

Set in the rural Japanese countryside, Best Wishes to All follows a young nameless girl who returns to her grandparents' home for a planned family gathering, where she quickly notices bizarre, strange behavior from the local residents.

Best Wishes to All really masters the uncomfortable, unsettling vibes of early Silent Hill cutscenes, and has plenty of deeper, disturbing themes that prove Shimotsu could really nail a descent into the Otherworld.

While Beau is Afraid and Eddington were certainly anxiety-inducing, Ari Aster's return to pure horror is long overdue.

Given that Aster is the man who popularized the trauma horror trend of the late 2010s, we can't imagine a filmmaker more suited to directing a movie based on a series that famously features monsters manifested from the pain and suffering of its protagonists. Aster loves a monstrous metaphor (hello, giant penis monster in Beau is Afraid), and the world of Silent Hill is full of them, from Pyramid Head to Fox Mask.

Aster's biggest hurdle, should he ever take the reins on a Silent Hill movie, will be eschewing his love of sardonic humor for something more sincere. Silent Hill isn't Resident Evil and its Jill Sandwiches after all – there's not a whole lot to laugh at here.

Alex Garland might currently have his hands full with A24's upcoming Elden Ring, but should he be bitten by the video game adaptation bug, a Silent Hill movie could turn to gold in his hands.

Garland's previous forays into genre like Ex Machina and Annihilation have been more sci-fi leaning than the Silent Hill games ever have, but the psychedelic dreamscape of the latter especially easily showcases how he could put a unique spin on the Otherworld.

And while Garland's 2022 folk horror Men was certainly divisive, its fish-out-of-water protagonist isolated in a town overrun with manifestations of her past trauma is Silent Hill through and through, like it or not.

In just three feature films, Jane Schoenbrun has dissected our endlessly fascinating, often unhealthy relationship with the Internet (We're All Going to the World's Fair), television (I Saw the TV Glow), and movies (Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma), so surely a spin on video games is the next logical step.

It's safe to assume that a Jane Schoenbrun Silent Hill would look quite different to your standard adaptation, and would probably have something far more meta to say about horror gaming as a whole.

We won't be the first to point out the similarities between Camp Miasma's Little Death and Silent Hill 2‘s Pyramid Head, either.

Remi Weekes may only have one feature under his belt, but the terrifying His House should be enough to secure the BAFTA Award-winning filmmaker a spot on this list.

Starring Sope Dirisu and Wunmi Mosaku, the folk horror thriller follows Bol and Rial, a refugee couple who have fled war-torn South Sudan for the prospect of a safer life in London, only to be met by institutional and societal racism, governmental abandonment, and the trauma of having to leave their home behind.

Without going too far into spoiler territory, what makes His House a great Silent Hill movie is the unraveling mystery at its core, one that manifests painful themes of shame, guilt, and trauma into nightmarish creatures and Otherworld-esque sequences. If Weekes returns to horror, this could be the perfect project for him.

Mari Asato's 2014 Fatal Frame is far from a direct adaptation of its survival horror game source material, yet it nails the gloomy, gothic tone, and shows that Asato is a filmmaker who understands the spirit of what makes a title scary, rather than attempting a 1:1 copy.

Asato studied under the tutelage of aforementioned Japanese horror master Kiyoshi Kurosawa, meaning she's got an eye for disturbing, uncanny visuals that linger right on the edge of your periphery.

Her work often focuses heavily on the struggles faced by young women, making her the perfect pick for a live-action take on Silent Hill f.

With its oppressive atmosphere, disturbing themes, and focus on dream logic over realism, Osgood Perkins' Longlegs could easily be a Silent Hill spin-off story. Hell, as the titular serial killer, Nic Cage had the creepy, uncanny PS2 graphics face down to a tee.

From Gretel & Hansel to The Monkey, some of Perkins' biggest strengths as a filmmaker lie in aesthetic world-building, and he's particularly adept at capturing a suffocating sense of dark urban Americana that the Silent Hill series aces in its original games.

Nobody does bleak, dismal horror quite like Austrian filmmaking duo Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala.

From Goodnight Mommy to The Devil's Bath, Franz and Fiala are known for putting their protagonists through the physical and emotional ringer with little (actually, zero) relief in sight.

This pair at the helm of a Silent Hill movie would surely deliver something truly dread-inducing and oppressively depressing, which is, ideally, what we're looking for when tackling a series founded on burned kids and murdered wives.

While you may not expect to see the director of Challengers on a list of filmmakers who should handle source material as terrifying as Silent Hill, hear us out; Guadagnino's Suspiria remake may be divisive, but it easily proves Guadagnino's chops at crafting horror that's rich in atmosphere, brutality, and tragedy.

Guadagnino's collaboration with Tilda Swinton would almost certainly cast her as Silent Hill‘s cultish matriarch, Dahlia Gillespie, while his penchant for tortured male protagonists (see: Daniel Craig's incredible, criminally underrated performance in Queer) means he could give us a James Sunderland for the ages, too.

David Cronenberg has always been the master of fleshy abominations, and the Silent Hill series is full of them. Cronenberg's later career work in particular is pensive, thoughtful, and concerned with ideas of morality and identity, which are somewhat underrated themes running through many Silent Hill games.

A Cronenberg take on Silent Hill 4: The Room, by and large one of the most experimental entries in the franchise, could be something really special, and would give the body horror maestro more than enough (literally) umbilical stretch to play with.

Tilman Singer's quirky 2024 horror Cuckoo follows a teenage girl isolated in a small town plagued by bizarre, unsettling circumstances, time loops, and maternal monsters, with only a grizzled old detective to help her. Basically, Silent Hill 3 set in the Swiss Alps, with Hunter Schafer as the Heather Mason of our dreams.

Prior to Cuckoo, Singer's 2018 supernatural horror, Luz  more than demonstrated his skill at depicting the hypnotic ambience that is a more overlooked feature of the Silent Hill series. Don't believe us? Check out how many Silent Hill Chill playlists there are on YouTube.