Editorials
How The Enduring UFO Endings of ‘Silent Hill’ Started A Non-Canon Meta Multiverse
It’s been extremely satisfying to watch the video game industry’s survival horror genre blossom and evolve from a niche curiosity to a dependable juggernaut. Resident Evil helped put the survival horror genre on the map in 1996 and has gone on to spawn countless imitators. However, Konami’s Silent Hill is an equally important franchise that opts for a darker and more psychologically-fueled style of horror storytelling.
Silent Hill is many things – depressing, claustrophobic, surreal – yet it’s not typically a series that’s considered to be especially funny. It has pushed its audience to stare into the abyss for over 25 years, yet the franchise has also spawned an absurd running joke that’s been growing ever since the series’ inception. Silent Hill’s infamous “UFO Ending” first came as a genuine shock, albeit a pivot that perfectly encapsulates Silent Hill’s unique voice and delivered a degree of madness that pushed the franchise into multiverse territory way ahead of the curve.
The video game industry was at a fascinating inflection point at the end of the ’90s that greatly benefited the original game. The concept of games with multiple endings that had to be unlocked under specific conditions had been around for decades, but Silent Hill helped reinvent this design element. Multiple endings have become a benchmark, with the original game featuring five unique conclusions that attempt to pathologize and expand upon various decisions that the player made during Harry Mason’s journey. Curiously, the fifth of these possible conclusions, designated as the “Joke Ending,” opts for a finale where Harry gets abducted by aliens.
The introduction of extraterrestrials to the narrative is a bold, brave decision. As much as this new ending was meant to be an unlockable Easter Egg for fans, it also functioned as a commentary on the passionate, dedicated nature of Silent Hill’s audience. Gaming culture and its role on the internet was quite different at the time. “Let’s Play” videos and intricate walkthrough breakdowns weren’t yet the norm. There was a true element of surprise to unlocking these extra endings, which were occasionally so complicated that they were only discovered by the most hardcore of fans. Resident Evil featured a comparable mechanic to unlock its extra endings and bonuses, but they were never as confounding as Silent Hill’s UFO Ending requirements.
Nobody on Team Silent had any idea that players would respond so positively to the first game’s Joke Ending. The concept was born as a private joke between Masahiro Ito, Keiichiro Toyama, Takayoshi Sato and other Team Silent members, in which they pitched silly explanations for Silent Hill’s paranormal activity and cursed nature. Among the suggestions were an alien conspiracy, the sun being too bright, or the work of a dog (the latter of which would become its own comical conclusion in Silent Hill 2). This idea amused the production team and also seemed more appealing and innovative than the standard “New Game+” bonuses that existed at the time, like a bonus costume or a more powerful weapon (although Silent Hill’s UFO Ending does add the aliens’ Hyper Blaster to Harry’s arsenal).
The UFO angle idea grew out of silliness, but Team Silent soon started to regard it as a tradition that helped cut the games’ tension and reward players with something so deeply unserious after hours upon hours of psychological torture. It’s incredibly funny for Silent Hill to give its audience plenty to chew on regarding cults, purgatory, generational trauma, and death and rebirth, only to then ignore all that in favor of a conspiracy theory-laden solution that goes, “It was aliens! Or a stubborn Shiba Inu!”
The success and evolution of the UFO Endings and how they’ve become one of the fandom’s favorite elements is a testament to why it’s important to take risks, even if they seem ridiculous. It’s this willingness to experiment that’s led to these UFO Endings’ enduring legacy and how they’ve helped Silent Hill connect disparate dots and form its own alternate multiverse.
The Silent Hill franchise is largely standalone in nature. Yes, there are broader connections between games, references to past characters and events, and Silent Hill 3 is explicitly about Harry Mason’s daughter, Heather, searching for her missing father after the first game’s events. Each game otherwise operates in its own space and functions as a new glimpse into another tortured soul’s fractured mental state that’s led them to the titular town.
That being said, theUFO endings playfully bring these distinct worlds together, much to the fans’ delight. Silent Hill 2’s UFO ending, for instance, brings back Harry from the first game, who works together with the aliens to abduct Silent Hill 2’s protagonist, James Sunderland. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, the Wii’s remake of Silent Hill, unites Harry, Heather, James, and Mira, the rogue Shiba Inu who is pulling the strings in Silent Hill 2. Shattered Memories’ UFO Ending also indicates that in this version of events, James kills his wife, Mary, by locking her in the basement until she starves again, convinced that she’s an alien.
Bloober Team’s 2024 Silent Hill 2 remake gets especially meta on this front when James from the original Silent Hill 2 confronts the remake’s counterpart and tells this version of James that he’s actually a clone. The aliens abduct Remake James, while the other James replaces him and begins his search for Mary, stuck in a grief loop.
It’s also worth pointing out that Silent Hill 3’s UFO ending is arguably the franchise’s climax with an extremely satisfying crossover celebration. Heather shows up at her father’s apartment, only to learn that he’s there, alive, with James and some aliens. Heather explains to her dad what’s happened, at which point he begins to perform flashy martial arts and declares war on Silent Hill. The ending concludes with Silent Hill being eradicated by aliens, while Harry, Heather, and James celebrate. Not only does this UFO ending unite the central characters of the first three games, but it’s technically the happiest ending in the franchise that finally brings Silent Hill’s evil to a close.
Silent Hill’s creative history with these UFO endings features tonal pivots that erase the gamer’s stress, but they also showcase stylistic deviations. The franchise’s UFO endings all shift from the game’s dominant visual style in order to deliver epilogues that are stylized like comic books, Mars Attacks trading cards, a Silent Age black-and-white movie, anime, and, most recently, a motion-comic manga in Silent Hill f. The use of different visual styles reinforces the idea that each of these is part of its own alternate Silent Hill universe, albeit one that follows an insular non-canon canon, so to speak.
The UFO Ending in Silent Hill: Origins gets more mileage out of Mira the Shiba Inu. However, Silent Hill: Origins’ original UFO Ending seriously supports the whole meta multiverse angle for these endings. The conclusion would have featured the game’s protagonist being abducted by aliens, only for it to then abruptly cut to Metal Gear Solid’s Solid Snake waking up from a nap while stationed in the tree. This UFO Ending would have suggested that the entirety of Silent Hill: Origins, or perhaps even Silent Hill, as a whole, was merely the dream of a character from another Konami franchise.
The latest Silent Hill games have taken the UFO Ending to unexpected places that make it exciting to consider where this idea will go next. Perhaps Christophe Gans’ Return to Silent Hill will somehow find a way to incorporate this gonzo tradition (for what it’s worth, Silent Hill: Revelations 3D’s director, M. J. Bassett, wanted to honor the UFO Ending in some fashion, even if it was just an extra bonus scene on the physical media release). There’s also the possibility of a new Silent Hill game that is even set within the UFO Ending timeline or has the player controlling an alien who is hunting down James to abduct him.
Anything is possible in a franchise like Silent Hill, even if it’s a tonal and stylistic devolution into surreal silliness. The survival horror series’ recent renaissance means that the next batch of Silent Hill games – whether that’s remakes of old classics that grow increasingly meta or an entirely new game in the style of Silent Hill f – are completely fearless with where they take this beloved tradition. Just keep searching for those Channelling Stones and watching the skies.
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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