If the end of Return to Silent Hill left you staring at the screen like, wait, what did I just watch, you are not alone. The twist has been a Rorschach test for viewers, but Hannah Emily Anderson has a clear read on it — and it is a lot more optimistic than you might expect from a Christophe Gans horror movie.
Anderson thinks the ending is actually hopeful
In a recent chat with ScreenRant's Grant Hermanns, Anderson said she sees the finale as a genuine reset for James Sunderland, played by Jeremy Irvine. She literally calls herself 'a deep romantic at heart' and leans into the kinder interpretation: that James gets to start over rather than spiral into oblivion.
'James gets a second chance.'
She doubles down on that take and pushes back on the more cynical reads.
'I think he gets another go around.'
Her reasoning is straightforward: sending James back through Silent Hill to relive the same trauma would be, in her words, too heartbreaking.
The ending, untangled quickly
- James is trying to rebuild after losing his girlfriend, Mary, and gets dragged into Silent Hill's usual nightmare maze.
- After enough horrors to break anyone, he decides he is done — he drives into Toluca Lake with Mary's body in the car.
- Instead of dying, he wakes up at the moment he first met Mary, like the timeline snapped back.
- He relives their first meeting, chooses not to make the same mistakes, and drives away from Silent Hill.
So is it a dying dream or a literal do-over?
A lot of viewers interpret that final loop as James hallucinating his best-case scenario in his last seconds underwater. Anderson is not on that train. She is arguing for a literal reset — a supernatural mulligan, not a fantasy in a drowning brain. Given how bleak this franchise usually is, that is a surprisingly gentle swing.
Where the movie lands overall
Return to Silent Hill is Gans back in the director's chair for a supernatural thriller that clearly wants to end on a hopeful note, even if the road there is rough. The wider reaction has been rougher: the film opened on January 23, 2026 and is sitting at a 20% Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes. Whether you buy the 'second chance' or prefer the darker read, the movie is dividing people — and not in a fun way for its reviews.