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.
Of the three films that make up the Diabolical Trinity of classic religious horror films—Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), and The Omen (1976)—The Omen is the most purely entertaining.
While Rosemary’s Baby digs into the societal shifts of the 60s and The Exorcist explores spiritual tensions between faith and doubt in an ever-shifting world, The Omen seems most interested in just telling a thrilling story. It achieves this by blending two major trends of the 1970s, the devil movie and the paranoid thriller, into one crackling adventure yarn. In the process, The Omen has sparked fear and curiosity about what could happen in the “end times” if such events are to occur.
After seeing The Exorcist, producer Harvey Bernhard contacted writer David Seltzer and said something along the lines of, “Hey, write me one of those.” Seltzer, having never read the Bible, thought it would be an interesting challenge, so, according to various interviews, he read the Bible and several commentaries in search of a story. Then he stumbled upon a passage in the book of Revelation, the image of a great Beast rising out of the sea, that sparked his imagination. In the commentaries, he found that the sea represented politics in some interpretations of the text, and he began building his story on that foundation.
Seltzer has told this story often, and I am inclined to believe him. However, from there, much of the theological-sounding lore of The Omen was created purely by Seltzer. Many of the ideas surrounding The Antichrist in the film appear to be drawn much more from the pop-eschatology sensation of the 1970s, The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay, than any Biblical source.
Lindsay’s book was the bestselling nonfiction book of the 1970s and re-popularized views of the “last days” that had been dying along with fundamentalism for decades, namely Dispensationalism, Millennialism, and the Pre-Tribulation Rapture. In dispensationalism, history is broken into several epochs of time (or dispensations) that culminate in the return of Christ and his thousand-year (millennial) reign.
Before this return, a seven-year Tribulation will occur in which the Antichrist comes to power and persecutes all who oppose him, culminating in a battle between the forces of good and evil at the valley of Megiddo, usually called Armageddon. Of course, in this worldview, the true believers in Jesus will be lifted out, or raptured, before all this takes place. Since the publication and popularity of The Late Great Planet Earth, this has been the prominent belief in Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christian circles, though Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestant denominations largely reject it.
Lindsay also did something unique that had not been the case even in dispensationalist circles before him—he posited that the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948 started the countdown to Armageddon. Fans of the film will immediately realize where Seltzer ran with this idea in the first line of the poem created for the movie: “When the Jews return to Zion…”
Damien Thorn and the Creation of Horror’s “Innocent Villain”
Seltzer’s next inspiration focused on the idea of the Antichrist as a child, what he would call the film’s “innocent villain.” In watching The Omen, it is readily apparent that Damien Thorn (Harvey Stephens) does not really do anything evil beyond a bit of normal kid mischief. Even the moment in which Damien knocks Kathy Thorn (Lee Remick) over a second-floor railing can be read as an accident orchestrated by Damien’s diabolically connected nanny, Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw). The film takes this idea of the innocent villain a step further by casting Gregory Peck, best known for playing arguably the greatest father in film history, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), as Damien’s earthly father, an element that greatly satisfied Seltzer.
The New Testament itself says very little about the Antichrist and certainly nothing about his childhood. In fact, the word antichrist is used twice (1 John 2:18 and 2 John 7 for the curious) and refers to groups of people, not a particular person. There is also a passage in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 in which the writer (usually attributed to Paul) discusses “The Man of Lawlessness” who will “exalt himself over everything that is called God” and “proclaim himself to be God.”
Then there is the Beast of Revelation chapter 13 with “seven heads and ten horns” that Seltzer latched onto, which has been interpreted in a multitude of ways over the centuries. Powerful people throughout history, from Charlemagne, various Popes during the Protestant Reformation era, Napoleon and Hitler, to modern politicians, including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, have all had the label placed on them by various circles. Even religious leaders like Billy Graham have not escaped being called the Antichrist.
Lindsay and modern dispensationalists are certain the Antichrist will be a 21st-century individual as they are equally certain that the Rapture, Tribulation, and return of Christ are imminent, likely within their lifetime. Many scholars and theologians, however, interpret these passages as symbolic representations of the Roman Empire and the first-century Caesars who persecuted, tortured, and murdered Christians and Jews who refused to submit to Imperial rule and worship them as gods. For example, that the Beast from the sea in Revelation has seven heads is symbolic of the famous seven mountains of Rome, with the 10 horns referring to rulers and magistrates of the Empire.
But this is all really of no matter to Seltzer and the story of The Omen. Instead of being concerned with any historical or theological accuracy, he instead built his own lore, which sends Robert Thorn and photographer Keith Jennings (David Warner) on a globetrotting investigation into the nature of the Antichrist and how to stop him. Some of this lore includes the child being born of a jackal, the reaction of animals, the protective cult that arises around Damien, the daggers of Megiddo, and maybe most interesting of all, the peculiar flaws in Jennings’s photographs that presage the ways certain individuals will die.
All these aspects are where the paranoid thrillers come in, as films like Blow Up (1966), Z (1969), The Conversation (1974), The Parallax View (1974), 3 Days of the Condor (1975), and All the President’s Men (1976) were all the rage at the time. Especially in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the idea of journalists (like Jennings) as ordinary heroes who could bring down the powerful, nefarious forces in the world was exactly what audiences craved. And what greater hidden evil force was there than the Devil? This is also why the device of the daggers of Megiddo is so important to a movie like this. If Damien is indeed the Antichrist, there must be a way to stop him, though in the Biblical text, the only power capable of destroying the Devil is God Himself.
The Mark of the Beast, 666, and the Film’s Most Famous Religious Symbolism
The piece of lore created for the movie with the most solid Biblical grounding is the Mark of the Beast. Revelation describes a mark on the forehead or hand of those who worship the Beast and his image. Again, this is symbolic language differentiating those who belong to the power of the Roman Empire and those who belong to Christ, who have the Mark of the Lamb. In Seltzer’s hands, the mark is very literal, a birthmark that is borne by not only the Antichrist but all his followers, meaning they are marked from before birth as belonging to Satan, and there is no escaping it. This is all rather distressing to the priest Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton), who betrays his mark by warning Thorn about Damien and pays the price by memorably being impaled by a spire that falls from a church steeple after being struck by lightning.
Why is the mark three sixes? Again, this is drawn from a passage in Revelation that states that the Beast can be identified by calculating his number. In Biblical scholarship, this is believed to be the sum of the name of a man transferred into Hebrew numerology, a practice in which each Hebrew letter also represents a number. Using this method, the number of the name Caesar Nero, which many believe to be the most logical choice, is six hundred sixty-six. In the film and elsewhere, this number is changed to three individual sixes. According to the film, this represents the Diabolical Trinity (a designation also unique to the film) made up of Satan, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet. That Damien carries this unique birthmark under his hair convinces Robert that the child is the Antichrist, and it’s up to him to destroy him.
Part of what makes The Omen great is its ambiguity. Damien could be the Antichrist, or he could be at the center of a series of coincidences. Director Richard Donner stated in interviews that he believed Robert Thorn had gone insane by the end of the film, which, to Donner, is the only explanation for why Thorn would attempt to kill an innocent child. However, that enigmatic smile in the final shot suggests that Damien does embody a spirit of great evil. The sequels, however, all but erase this ambiguity.
In audiences, The Omen sparked a renewed interest in the concept of the Antichrist and the dispensationalist interpretation of the end times that continues to echo throughout the last five decades. Around the time of the film’s release, even Elvis Presley was photographed brandishing a paperback copy of Seltzer’s novelization. Dispensationalist authors like Hal Lindsay, Tim LaHaye, and John Hagee have made millions publishing books and giving lectures about the Antichrist and the end of the world.
The Legacy of The Omen, 50 Years Later
Though A Thief in the Night (1972) preceded The Omen in initial release, it gained quite a resurgence (along with the ability to create three sequels) in the wake of the popularity of The Omen and went on to scar the psyches of Evangelical children for decades. Hal Lindsay was also able to release a film version of The Late Great Planet Earth in 1978, complete with narration and a brief onscreen appearance from Orson Welles.
In the 1990s, the Left Behind series became a cultural phenomenon, spawning twelve books in the core series, a YA spinoff series, video games, and a movie series (2000-2005) starring Kirk Cameron. A bigger studio adaptation of the first book was released in 2014, starring Nicolas Cage. 20th Century Fox and The Omen got in on the renewed “end-of-the-world” vigor by releasing a remake of the original film on June 6, 2006. The franchise was revived once again in 2024 with The First Omen, which explores ideas of the Antichrist and the motivations of those in power in our current religious, social, and political context.
But despite all the sequels, spinoffs, rip-offs, remakes, and “end times” money grabs of the last 50 years, the original version of The Omen remains untouchable. Its greatest strength is that it seeks, first and foremost, to entertain. And it does so admirably.
After half a century, its influence can be felt in horror, the culture at large, and even in various faith circles. It is a testament to the power of story and film that, consciously or unconsciously, fans of The Omen and those who have never seen it alike are, to this very day, marked by the Beast.
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