‘Silent Hill f’ review: a gorgeous, grotesque reimagining of the classic horror outing

The mist, dense and cloying, hides ancient things. As abandoned buildings emerge, they’re elegant edifices, untouched by industry, pagoda-roofed. Woodland paths might lead to old shrines, treacherous rice fields or mighty trees steeped in legend. In the rot of the streets bloom blood red flowers, infecting the strange creatures lurking within. Gone is the faceless nurse and the terror-inducing screech of Pyramid Head’s giant blade on slaughterhouse floor; in their place are gracefully murderous scarecrows and an amorphous fog monster grasping at you with flowery red tendrils. The place is, dare we say it, gruesomely beautiful.

• READ MORE: ‘Silent Hill 2’ review: masterful horror remake dials up the dread

As is franchise tradition, you start Silent Hill f by coming around after a long, beast-filled nightmare – well, the 13 years since the last substantial instalment in 2012 – and Silent Hill is… different. Not even Silent Hill at all, in fact. In contrast to the promise of Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro’s cancelled 2015 project Silent Hills and last year’s acclaimed Silent Hill 2 Remake, offshoot series comeback Silent Hill f discards the entire central aesthetic of the titular ghost town (essentially Twin Peaks half sunk into hell). According to publisher Komani, the games were always Japanese at heart, so are here rebooted in the mist-shrouded mountain village of Ebisugaoka in the 1960s where a schoolgirl named Hinako Shimizu is tasked with ridding the town of all of the otherworld’s many-titted monsters with nowt but a rusty pipe and some rejuvenating herbal brews.

Shifting Silent Hill to Japan – a zeitgeisty move with Assassin’s Creed doing likewise this year – has pros and cons. Having been so recently reintroduced to the classic original Maine town setting with the Silent Hill 2 remake, it’s refreshing not to be circling formulaic American blocks rattling doorknobs again. Ebisugaoka is a more organic, sprawling town of tight alleyways, makeshift waterways and paddy fields – even though exploration off its tightly directed story rails is limited. Graphically and atmospherically, it’s a far more enchanting experience out to merge beauty and fear.

Rather than the bleak industrial fencing and blood-smattered bunkers of most Silent Hill games, the darker otherworld sections draw Hinako out of the (misleadingly lightweight) schoolyard love-triangle story taking place in Ebisugaoka and into an entirely different dimension of ancient Japanese architecture, painted wooden charms and ornate palaces shrouded in darkness. There, a mysterious fox guide and some spooky dolls lead Hinako through a series of ceremonial, power-enhancing rites that are as gruesome and disturbing as any in gaming. Imagine The Handmaid’s Tale meets Saw.

On the other hand, leaning into Eastern mysticism and myth makes Silent Hill f feel more like a stand-alone Japanese horror game only loosely linked to the franchise by mist, mood and small-town setting. At times, it feels closer to other beloved gaming franchises. Combat with the more ninja-like enemies aspires to Sekiro levels of attack-dodge timing and weakness punishment.

There are no ranged weapons either, so you have to make do with pipes, crowbars and sledgehammers. The range of exotic teas, sweets, tinctures and omamori amulets to help heal, enhance and calm you – and the Sanity-draining ‘Focus’ mechanic which slows down fights for charged attacks – smack of the standard samurai role-playing game. You upgrade by trading in trinkets at small roadside shrines for ‘Faith’ points, as if there was ever any godliness in Silent Hill. Hirako’s otherworldly enhancements make chunks of the late-game feel more like an X-Men title.

Then there are the monsters themselves. Many are as bent, twisted and erratic as the Silent Hill classics but some come slicing across arenas like Dark Souls’ Sister Friede and others are weird blobs straight out of Resident Evil. Witness the gigantic sword-slamming scrotum or a big pile of boobs that gives birth to extra pupae monsters.

Thankfully, on the suggested ‘Story Mode’, enemies are dispatchable enough for you to ignore most of the bloated Sanity and Focus elements and slash your way through with plenty of spare inventory slots. A slightly different story are the puzzles. Playing on the recommended hard setting (unchangeable during a playthrough), most are a satisfying challenge in the traditional Silent Hill manner. There’s great pleasure in deciphering the school’s numerical girl-code and one otherworld segment brilliantly turns the entire level map into a puzzle in itself. But you’ll be tested, somewhat ridiculously, on your knowledge of the silhouettes of Japanese fauna and, on occasion, subjectivity replaces logic. Which of these sickle-wielding scarecrows has the most “polite” smile, would you say?

Silent Hill f, then, feels more like a tribute than a genuine reboot. For that, we may have to wait for the forthcoming Silent Hill: Townfall. But it’s an intense, rewarding and immersive one nonetheless. Its various endings will have lore-mongers slavering over the merging timelines, shifting identities and psychological, inner-world implications that unravel during this tangled tale of love, abuse, alienation and massive mewling boob beasts.

‘Silent Hill f’ is out September 25 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC