Editorials
‘Return to Silent Hill’ Pulls Doomed Romance from the Dangerous Fog
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Return to Silent Hill.
The Silent Hill franchise is not known to be particularly romantic. Based on Konami’s 1999 survival horror game, Christophe Gans’ 2006 film is a post-apocalyptic nightmare in which a frightened mother wanders a monster-filled netherworld, desperate to find her adopted daughter.
An oft-forgotten 2012 sequel continues this plotline while diving into the origins of a sinister cult that consumes the West Virginia town. The cinematic story is one of daring devotion and parental love at all costs, but Gans’ long-awaited sequel Return to Silent Hill features an achingly beautiful romance nestled in the ashen streets and fiery corridors. Based on the 2001 game Silent Hill 2, Gans pulls a tender yet tragic love story from the notorious town’s deadly fog.
Widely considered a masterpiece of modern gaming, Silent Hill 2 follows widower James Sunderland on a quest to fulfill a promise to his late wife Mary, who succumbed to illness three years ago. This time set in rural Maine, we watch as James explores the decimated town, trying to piece together the remnants of his shattered marriage. On the surface, Gans’ film is a faithful retelling of this powerful story, with imagery pulled directly from the game’s most iconic sequences. But subtle changes to the subject matter transform Return to Silent Hill from the story of a grief-stricken man desperate to assuage his guilt to one of a doomed couple reunited in the afterlife.
We’re introduced to Gans’ James (Jeremy Irvine) just moments before he meets Mary (Hannah Emily Anderson) at a bus stop overlooking the idyllic town. Smitten, the aimless artist, decides to stay, and the lovebirds begin intertwining their lives. But Mary hesitates to fully commit, fearing parts of her life may frighten James. We learn that she is the daughter of a cult leader named Joshua Crane, who essentially built the tiny town. Years after his death, Crane’s followers have convinced Mary that they are her family and repeat a terrifying ritual in which they feed the child a dangerous drug, then bathe in her blood. Horrified by Mary’s continued participation, James breaks off their relationship and storms out of town.
We piece together this upsetting backstory as James explores the treacherous fog. Just moments after their first interaction, we catch a glimpse of Mary’s floating corpse, a hint that Silent Hill is not what it seems. Sometime later, James drinks alone while dodging calls from his therapist. After receiving a letter from Mary begging him to find her at “our place,” James returns to the once-picturesque overlook that now leads to a deserted wasteland. In addition to the aforementioned cult storyline, pulled from the original game, Gans remixes several characters and plot points to fill out this dystopian world.
As James descends the overlook stairs, Angela (Anderson) greets him with a dire warning, explaining that Silent Hill has been destroyed by flood, fire, and contamination. In town, James meets a little girl named Laura (Evie Templeton) who cradles a mutated baby doll. But most painful is Maria (also Anderson), a woman who looks just like Mary save for her more provocative dress and worldly demeanor. With unspoken pain hanging in the air, James allows himself to enjoy Maria’s companionship, awakening a long-dormant need for connection and love.
After narrowly avoiding certain death, Maria begs James to leave Silent Hill and accept that Mary is gone. But James abruptly turns on her and seems to summon a dangerous beast. As he angrily calls Maria a distraction, a muscle-bound brute known as Red Pyramid (Robert Strange) appears behind the frightened woman and impales her with a massive blade. A peek inside the monster’s rusty helmet reveals James’ own angry eyes, and we realize that this deadly creature is a manifestation of our protagonist’s rage. If Maria exists as a chance to move on and find happiness with someone else, Red Pyramid is a means of purging this temptation and punishing James for finding happiness. With all mental obstacles removed, James reconnects with a monstrous Mary who pulls him back to reality. As he lies in a psychiatric hospital bed, we learn that his girlfriend died several months ago, and James cannot bring himself to say goodbye.
This revelation reframes the story, and we see that the decimated Silent Hill is actually a metaphysical recreation of James’ shattered mind. Trauma has darkened his view of the world, and each memory spawns new monsters that James must battle as he faces the truth. The moths that constantly swarm each scene stem from a single insect on the wall next to Mary’s hospital bed. The frightening horde of faceless nurses nod to the stress of a long hospital stay (though in the game, they symbolize James’ attraction to Mary’s female caregivers). It is not Silent Hill itself that has been destroyed, but the visions of their once happy life.
James eventually admits his girlfriend’s full name: Mary Angela Laura Crane, and we realize that each survivor represents an element of her painful past. Gans liberally pulls elements from the game to inform our doomed heroine’s story. The original Angela seeks revenge for sexual abuse at the hands of her father, while Laura is an orphan whom Mary had planned to adopt before she died. Gans uses both characters to symbolize parental betrayal and Crane’s systemic abuse of his own daughter. In the depths of the ruined hospital, James finally finds Mary, a writhing, mutant combination of these three personas. But his lovingly placed hand on her cheek shows that he has finally seen every part of her and decided not to turn away.
Only after accepting Mary’s traumatic past can James confront his own worst memory. Walking through a fiery door, he finds her body on the blazing roof and remembers his return to the real Silent Hill. We flash back to a sunny hospital room where Mary gazes weakly out the window. In the final stages of an illness caused by her father’s drug, she begs James to end her suffering. Sobbing, he acquiesces and smothers his beloved with a towel. This devastating scene is both a recreation and a subversion of the original game’s most upsetting moment in which James murders Mary out of growing resentment and frustration at the massive weight of her care.
Mary’s request to die at James’ hands changes the story from one of a selfish man lashing out to a lovesick boyfriend condemning himself in order to save the woman he loves. As James remembers this horrific moment, Mary’s corpse rises from the hospital’s roof, transforming into a monstrous yet beautiful moth-like creature. Rather than a final boss James must defeat, she is an aching reminder of all he has lost.
Though Silent Hill 2 has no official canon ending, players can experience one of six various endings, ranging from James and Maria leaving town together to a sentient dog pulling the strings. However, Gans follows the ending of the 2006 novelization and opts for the heartbreaking “In Water” finale. Having received forgiveness from Mary and reconciled his unthinkable choice, James carries her body to his car and drives it into the nearby lake. Rather than try to move on without her, James has returned to Silent Hill to die alongside the love of his life. This heartbreaking scene harkens back to the early image of Mary’s floating body, reminding us that their love was always destined to end in tragedy.
Gans leaves the logistics and timing of this disturbing act vague, allowing James to die in a moment of beauty. As the water swirls around him, headlights flash before his eyes, and we’re transported back to their special place. We watch as James once again crashes through Mary’s luggage, and they meet at the Silent Hill overlook. But this time, James seems fully aware of the twists and turns their story will take. He savors each moment with the oblivious Mary, knowing he will get to experience it all again. By navigating the treacherous town, he has confronted his darkest moments and found a way to assuage his guilt. Though their love story ends in tragedy, James is rewarded with an eternity spent enjoying his most treasured memory.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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