Editorials
The Making of ‘Siren’: How Silent Hill’s Creator Redesigned Survival Horror
After creating and directing Silent Hill, one of the most ground-breaking, iconic and disturbing horror titles in gaming history, you would think that the last genre developer Keiichiro Toyama would make his directorial follow-up with would be survival horror. However, though that kind of thinking may be perfectly fine for many other developers, it wasn’t for Toyama. In fact, Toyama followed Silent Hill up with what is arguably not only a better game, but also one that presents a horror location far more sinister and unnerving than the foggy streets of Silent Hill could ever hope to be.
The game was the 2003 Playstation 2 horror masterpiece Siren.
Siren (known as Forbidden Siren in PAL territories) is set in the rural Japanese town of Hanuda, a place that is largely segregated from the rest of the world, thanks to the rabid zealots who reside within its boundaries. After an earthquake devastates the region and replaces the surrounding area with an eerie, endless red sea, villagers consumed by the red sea begin to turn into possessed beings, hellbent on creating a physical form for the reawakening of an ancient god. These possessed individuals are called Shibito, and they roam Hanuda in an almost zombie-like state, moaning, grunting, carrying out meaningless tasks from their former lives and babbling as they seek out any non-Shibito to murder. The player, taking control of 10 survivors over the course of the game, must escape the town before they themselves become mindless Shibito. The story, which plays out episodically, takes twists and turns at various points, and ultimately reveals a conclusion that is both satisfying and shocking. Toyama explains his take on how he unravelled the story in saying, “If you undo the tight and tangled balls of yarn in various places, you will eventually discover that it is all just one taught strand; the moment of catharsis. That was how I explained it to the team when we discussed story development.”
Before Toyama began work on Siren, his departure from Konami wasn’t as smooth as he would have hoped. Speaking about this he says, “Silent Hill set a bold new standard, and I am proud of what we accomplished, but I was under a lot of pressure in my position, and my lack of experience led to a lot of issues as I managed the team. To be frank, I lost confidence in my ability to direct. In order to make a fresh start, I joined SCE (now SIE) to work as an artist in an entirely unrelated genre. It was there that I gained the experience I needed and had the chance to learn how to lead a team naturally. Even as I was working in a different genre, I was stocking up new horror ideas, so when the time came for me to take on the directorship of a title once again, I chose to make a horror title”.
One of the characters you play as in Siren. It had originally been planned for Siren to feature 100 different playable characters.
At the heart of Siren is Hanuda, the rural village in which the game takes place. From the rundown wooden buildings across the town that show signs of regular lives that have suddenly been interrupted by some otherworldly calling, the various vehicles and activities that have been creepily abandoned when the villagers became Shibito, to the Silent Hill-like air raid siren that can be heard reverberating across the secluded region, the intense and bleak atmosphere of Hanuda is palpable and unmatched. Whereas Silent Hill is more of a ghost town of sorts, Hanuda is still inhabited, but the people who dwell there now are merely vacant lots for some malevolent almost Lovecraftian force. Though it almost sounds like a cliché you’ve read in almost every video game article since the medium existed, the town of Hanuda in Siren truly is a character unto itself. Toyama, born in the country himself, aimed to recreate the kind of terror “only a child can feel” by placing the player in such a secluded location.
Much like Hanuda, the large cast of Siren also takes center stage. Originally planned to allow the player take control of over 100 different villagers (yes, you read that right), Toyama cut down that number quite significantly in order to tighten up the story he was trying to tell. He explains, “We think 10 was a good balance. This gave the gameplay a lot of variety, including a stage where you play as a little girl who can do nothing but run and hide. We also did some things with our characters impossible in ordinary games – some of them drop out of the story completely, while others come back as villains. I think the narrative impact these moments have is one of our biggest successes”. The characters are for the most part normal people thrown into an unthinkable situation, and Siren does a wonderful job of giving this ensemble cast a heart. Additionally, a piece of their humanity is further achieved by using photographs of actors faces applied directly to their character models, a visual choice that not many games have opted for, particularly before Siren came along. This unusual effect comes across as unsettling at first, but soon it helps pull the player into the experience and, where possible, helps ground an impossible story within the realm of possibility.
Another aspect of Siren that helped it stand out among other titles in the overcrowded genre was the Sight Jack system. Sight Jacking essentially allows the player to switch their POV to that of a nearby Shibuto. This POV is unsteady as it perfectly follows the shaky and tormented movements of a Shibito and this, alongside the sound of their laboured breathing, garbled chatter and shrieking cries, makes for one hell of an unnerving experience. This POV is best used to survey the area for tactical advantage in terms of safely moving forward, as despite Siren offering the player a few different weapons for self-defence, Shibito are best avoided completely when possible. What’s more is that if the player is spotted by a Shibito, it is not uncommon for the screen to suddenly cut to the POV of the Shibito who is now in direct pursuit. These moments make for sudden scares that the likes of Silent Hill and Resident Evil could never even come close to. Toyama touches on the implementation of the Sight Jack system and says, “Among the ideas I had, one was taking pitched submarine battles, reliant on sonar, and replacing the sonar with something visual. It added originality to the gameplay, and it also allowed players to know something terrifying was approaching without letting them see it clearly. We thought that was particularly suited to the horror genre, so we used it in Siren. It became a symbol of the curse shared by the villagers, so it worked well with and added depth to the story”.
However, with the revolutionary system came issues in terms of achieving it. Toyama continues, “We faced a technical issue with the system. To maintain Sight Jack consistency, we had to retain every single Shibito and environmental effect in memory and track their movements, even if they were entirely in the background and unable to be seen. This restriction posed a huge problem for the technology of the time. But I was lucky to have a team of young staff who took a very positive attitude toward trying new things. So we had the benefit of a lot of momentum from considering and then resolving each issue.”
The Shibito come in some truly disturbing forms, including these Spider Shibito
Siren took inspiration from several different sources, from novels such as Battle Royale and the Shinki series, the Manga artistry of Junji Ito, Daijiro Morohoshi and Ryoko Yamagishi to photographs by Paul F. McCarthy directly influencing the design of the Shibuto. However, the main well of inspiration for the project was Insumasu o ouu Kage, a 1992 TV Japanese TV adaptation of H.P Lovecraft’s The Shadow over Innsmouth. In terms of real-world inspiration however, Toyama was inspired by the so-called “Hidden Christians” who lived in the Kyushu region of Japan, while he also drew from the Tsuyasma Massacre, a killing spree in 1938 which saw 21-year old Mutsuo mercilessly murder half of his entire village with the aid of an axe, shotgun and katana.
Backing up the chilling setting, disturbing imagery and bleak atmosphere in Siren is a truly incredible soundtrack by Hitomi Shimizu. Keyboardist and composer Shimizu typically focuses on live-action and animation for her work, as well as being part of the musical duo Syzygys, but she has composed on Siren and Siren: Blood Curse, which was the 2008 reimagining of the original Siren game. Her work here is impeccable as her composition becomes something that is more in the “soundscape” territory than typical “soundtrack”. From strange chanting, otherworldly howls, swooping winds, distant noises and the churning of machines to audio that sounds like garbled transmissions from a different reality, Shimizu’s work intrinsically binds itself to the very fabric of Siren itself. Incredible.
As of 2018 Siren is 15 years old. The game spawned a sequel, a remake, a live-action film adaptation, and an upcoming manga series. But despite each new piece of the Siren franchise expanding and building upon the horror of the original, the first game still stands apart from everything else. After Toyama revolutionized the survival horror genre with Silent Hill, he positively perfected it with Siren. Toyama remarks about how Siren is currently being received in saying, “We recently held an event to celebrate the 15th anniversary and I was shocked to see so many new fans, even more than the initial launch. Two aspects of the game, the blurring between reality and fantasy and the timeline being revealed from the beginning, are incredibly well-suited to the culture of Let’s Play videos and Twitter that has emerged in the past 15 years. The title has become a shared experience that is passed onward. This makes me incredibly happy, and I can’t wait to see how the community will grow and change from here.”
The Sight Jack helps you pinpoint a Shibito’s location, but also means you get the horror of seeing them see you.
Since Siren: Blood Curse, Toyama has moved onto directing the Gravity Rush franchise, but perhaps one day he will return to his survival horror roots. However, who’s to say that when he does instead of merely giving us Siren 3 he decides to hit the restart button entirely. Regardless of what the future holds for the franchise, Siren is a classic that gamers who passed it by upon release should consider giving it a chance now.
Finally, when asked if Toyama would change anything about Siren he simply says, “Maybe an overhaul of the controls, especially the shooting sections… But I actually feel like players nowadays have a fondness for those not-exactly-polished parts of the game. So maybe we shouldn’t change anything at all…”.
Indeed. Nothing at all.
After fifty years of continuous writing, Stephen King has become a genre unto himself.
The unrivaled Master of Horror made a splash in 1974 with his debut novel Carrie and has been terrifying readers ever since. Two years later, Brian De Palma brought this shocking story to the screen with an equally electrifying horror film that remains a genre classic and a prototypical example of “Good For Her” horror. This dual debut seemed to open the floodgates, unleashing endless waves of Stephen King films.
From the highs of Misery, Cujo, and The Shawshank Redemption to the schlocky fun of Cat’s Eye, Creepshow, and Children of the Corn, the last five decades have seen just about every notable horror creator take a stab at the author’s massive collection.
In recent years, this singular subgenre has begun to burst at the seams, expanding to include Stephen King-esque fare. In 2016, brothers Matt and Ross Duffer debuted Stranger Things, a sci-fi series heavily inspired by two of King’s most famous books. The Netflix series remixes Firestarter and It by following a little girl with psychic powers and an intrepid group of kids on bikes who must battle an otherworldly foe and a sinister government agency. With its clever blend of modern effects and comforting nostalgia, this gateway horror series paved the way for Andy Muschietti’s It adaptation which remains the highest grossing horror film of all time.
Four years later, Mike Flanagan would create Midnight Mass, a spiritual adaptation of King’s second novel Salem’s Lot. Published in 1975, the book sees a tiny New England town torn apart by a centuries-old vampire. Though Flanagan’s story is perhaps more tender, both iterations of the classic horror tale follow close-knit communities shaken to their core by the presence of an ancient evil.
In addition to these recent hits, 2025 was a banner year for the Master of Horror. Audiences delighted in six mainstream adaptations, including the massively popular It: Welcome to Derry which chronicles earlier cycles of the titular clown’s reign. With this boost to King’s cultural cache, it’s no surprise that we’ve begun to see more unofficial adaptations of the author’s work and horror creators who build their own unique castles in King’s creative sandbox.
So what defines a Stephen King-esque story?
For the past fifty years, the prolific author has dipped his toes in nearly every subgenre from supernatural stories and grisly gore to western fantasy and science fiction. Including his vast catalogue of short fiction, King has tackled ghosts, demons, werewolves, zombies, aliens, mutants, and self-driving cars, not to mention bizarre monsters of his own creation. But what truly unites this vast array of horror is King’s focus on relatable characters. In his 2000 memoir/instructional text On Writing, the prolific author describes the amusement he finds in writing disparate characters, placing them in horrific scenarios, then exploring the ways they try to survive.
An unofficial Stephen King adaptation may take place in the author’s native New England — bonus points if it’s set in Maine — and reference his well-known heroes and villains. But what makes the King connection unbreakable is a character-driven story about average people who band together in the face of abject terror.
Weapons Captures Small Town Stephen King
Following his 2022 shocker Barbarian, Zach Cregger returned with Weapons, a sprawling story that begins in a doomed elementary school. On an otherwise ordinary day, Justine (Julia Garner) arrives at her desk to find that all but one of her students have disappeared. As the mystery grows increasingly violent, Justine and Archer (Josh Brolin), the father of a missing boy, find their way to the home of Alex (Cary Christopher), the class’ only surviving student. In some ways reminiscent of Salem’s Lot, Weapons swings wildly through the unfortunate town, introducing us to its flawed inhabitants as we watch their lives fall apart.
Cregger’s setup nods to a pair of King short stories. Both “Suffer the Little Children” and “Here There Be Tygers” tackle monstrous presences in elementary schools, but as Weapons reaches its final act, Constant Readers may remember another Stephen King tale. Featured in his 1985 collection Skeleton Crew, “Gramma” introduces us to George, a little boy tormented by an aging witch. On an afternoon alone with his sickly grandmother, the frightened child gradually realizes that the imposing old woman has been waiting for an opportunity to cast a spell that will extend her own life by possessing his body.
Alex finds himself similarly tortured by his aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan), a garish witch who orchestrates a desperate plot to sustain her own strength. Transforming humans into mindless weapons, Gladys has taken over Alex’s family home and lured his classmates to the basement. Holding them in a comatose state, she syphons off their energy to extend her own supernatural life.
Vastly different in many ways, both “Gramma” and Weapons hinge on a sinister witch who uses horrific magical spells to sacrifice the bodies of her vulnerable prey.
Hokum Echoes The Shining and 1408
It’s nearly impossible to watch a film about a haunted hotel without thinking of King’s third novel, The Shining. This icy story follows Jack Torrance, an angry writer struggling with his sobriety and a shameful incident haunting his past. Accompanied by his wife and young son, Jack has taken a job as the winter caretaker for the Overlook, a haunted hotel situated high in the Rocky Mountains. Snowed in, Jack finds himself tormented by dangerous ghosts who amplify his greatest fears.
Damian McCarthy’s Hokum follows a similarly troubled figure. Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) is a surly writer who travels to the Bilberry Woods Hotel in rural Ireland to spread his parents’ ashes. Haunted by his own tragic past, Ohm finds himself trapped in the honeymoon suite, a decaying room that’s been permanently closed to protect visitors from a dangerous witch trapped within its walls. Visual nods to King’s text abound with woodcut figurines and an animated clock, mirroring ominous descriptions found in King’s text.
Another terrifying sequence sees Ohm staring with horror at a closed door, the only thing separating him from the approaching witch. As the door knob slowly turns, Constant Readers remember Jack’s narrow escape from the ghostly woman in room 217. And Ohm’s popular Conquistador books directly reference King’s long-running fantasy series The Dark Tower which follows a gunslinger named Roland Deschain tasked with protecting the nexus of the universe.
In addition to these thematic comparisons, Hokum bears striking resemblance to King’s terrifying short story “1408.” Collected in 2002’s Everything’s Eventual, the terrifying story follows Mike Enslin, a dejected writer who’s risen to fame penning essays about his adventures in haunted locations. Mike arrives at the Hotel Dolphin and bullies his way into the titular room, despite the manager’s dire warnings. McCarthy nods to this story with an ominously misplaced hotel room door, reminiscent of King’s entry to 1408, an unsuspecting portal that appears to move each time Mike looks away.
However, McCarthy’s most direct reference lies in a minicorder Ohm uses to capture notes. Trapped inside the dreaded honeymoon suite, this device offers well-timed messages while sitting next to a decomposing corpse. Mike records his time in 1408 with his own trusty minicorder. Described for the reader, his tape has captured the man’s slow descent into madness as the room prepares to swallow him whole. With conclusions that differ wildly in tone, both Ohm and Mike find their lives irrevocably changed by encounters with the supernatural realm.
Widow’s Bay Builds Its Own Version of Castle Rock
Katie Dippold’s Widow’s Bay has taken the idea of an unofficial King adaptation and turned it into an art form. The Apple TV series sees the residents of the titular island plagued by a curse that dates back centuries. Not only does the picturesque hamlet not accommodate wifi connections, those born on the island face certain death should they ever try to leave. Desperate to modernize the tiny town, Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) draws in waves of tourists just as a new cycle of terror begins.
Blending horror with deft comedy, Dippold makes cheeky references to King’s body of work. Tom warns that, “there’s something in the fog,” reminding readers of King’s 1980 novella The Mist. And Loftis’ own stay in the town’s haunted hotel sees him tormented by the ghost of a murderous clown. We even spy a vintage King hardback peeking out of a local book trade box.
In many ways Widow’s Bay feels like a new iteration of the author’s Little Tall Island, a tiny village off the coast of Maine. In addition to the 1992 novel Dolores Claiborne and a handful of harrowing short stories, this quaint fishing village is also the setting for King’s 1999 teleplay Storm of the Century. Premiering on ABC primetime, this tragic tale follows a terrified group of islanders who batten down the hatches for a dangerous Nor’easter only to find a more sinister threat lurking within.
Constant Readers may also be reminded of Castle Rock, the author’s favorite fictional town.
First introduced in the 1981 novel Cujo, the charming village becomes the star of Needful Things, King’s satire about consumerism. After several Castle Rock stories, we’re reintroduced to its residents as they gossip about the arrival of Leland Gaunt and the grand opening of his curio shop. Anything their hearts desire can be found in his varied inventory, so long as they’re willing to pay the price. Pitting cantankerous neighbors against each other, Gaunt ignites a wave of grisly violence by exploiting long-held resentments and feuds.
The town’s only defense against this supernatural threat is beleaguered sheriff Alan Pangborn. Still grieving the deaths of his wife and younger son, Alan struggles to connect with his older child and pick up the pieces of his shattered life. Also a widower, Loftis struggles to raise his own restless son and explain the strange details of his wife’s tragic death. Attempting to unravel the island’s dark secrets, Tom is aided by quirky residents including a surly fisherman named Wyck (Stephen Root) and Patricia (Kate O’Flynn), an earnest Town Hall employee. King’s own novels feature many of these proactive alliances with disparate characters combining their strengths to overcome insurmountable odds.
With Widow’s Bay renewed for a second season and Mike Flanagan’s Carrie series on the horizon, the future seems bright for new King adaptations, both spiritual and directly pulled from his catalogue. The prolific author also shows no signs of slowing down with two publications nearing release. His upcoming novel, Other Worlds Than These, is the long-awaited third Talisman book which teases direct ties to his Dark Tower world. Holly Forever will be a new installment of his crime series, offering a different kind of genre fare.
This embarrassment of riches spawning multiple worlds seems ripe for spiritual adaptation and will likely inspire horror creators for decades to come.
Kate O’Flynn, Stephen Root and Matthew Rhys in “Widow’s Bay,” now streaming on Apple TV.
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