‘Silent Hill: Townfall’ review: like a folk-horror sequel to ‘Alien: Isolation’

We may pull ourselves from the ocean onto a deserted dock, not knowing where we are, who we are or why there’s an IV drip of strange black fluid in the back of our hand, but Silent Hill: Townfall still feels very much like a homecoming. Read more: The biggest video game concerts you can’t miss in 2026 After a sojourn into the myths and architecture of rural Japan on last year’s Silent Hill f, the franchise is called back to the West, although not as far as the rigid blocks of smalltown USA that it’s trudged so many times before. This time our bewildered amnesiac hero, Simon Ordell, finds himself mysteriously summoned to the remote Scottish island of St Amelia, recently mourning a local tragedy and now mist-shrouded and abandoned. Although, to be fair, most remote British villages feel like this after 5pm on weekdays. Except here, the phone boxes work. The winding backstreets and quaint local shops – stunningly rendered in the soggy matt textures of classic folk horror; this is among the most believable and immersive landscapes in the series so far – are soon overrun with chest-rending monsters, hyperactive axe-heads and a towering creature lost in the fog overhead. To make Simon’s ...