Editorials
Angels, Devils, and Blinding Light: The Tragic Beauty of ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ and ‘Return to Silent Hill’
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Jacob’s Ladder and Return to Silent Hill.
On the surface, Jacob’s Ladder and the world of Silent Hill have very little in common. One is a psychological horror film about a Vietnam veteran struggling to adjust to life after war, while another is a post-apocalyptic survival horror video game plagued with mutant monsters and a giant pyramid-headed brute.
But Christophe Gans’ sequel Return to Silent Hill builds upon themes of grief and sorrow to bridge the gap between these two worlds. Both explore the tenuous line between life and death, creating visceral depictions of profound grief and the tragic beauty of letting go.
Adrian Lyne’s 1990 film begins in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta as a unit of American soldiers is attacked by an unseen enemy. But just before the world explodes, several men begin acting strangely. Some collapse or experience catatonia, while others begin spinning out of control. We will later learn that they have been secretly fed an experimental hallucinogen designed to increase their aggression on the battlefield, and something has gone dreadfully wrong. Fleeing the attack, Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) is stabbed with a bayonet and lies bleeding on the jungle floor. But just as quickly as this chaos began, we’re pulled into 1975 New York City and a mostly deserted subway train. Having fallen asleep on his evening commute, Jacob spies a tentacled passenger and ghostly faces while crossing the tracks to make his way home.
Jacob’s Ladder plays out in three distinct timelines that merge together in a shocking twist. Clearly suffering from PTSD, the Vietnam veteran has periodic flashbacks to his time “in country.” He recalls being airlifted out of the jungle by a helicopter that also sustained enemy fire. Jacob also remembers his life before the war with his ex-wife, Sarah (Patricia Kalember), and three young boys. A cache of family photographs introduces us to his youngest son, Gabe (Macaulay Culkin), who was killed while riding his bike in the street. Now Jacob lives with his new girlfriend, Jezebel (Elizabeth Peña), who works with him at the post office. But devilish forces seem to be intruding on Jacob’s life, inching closer with each passing day.
At a house party, Jacob sees a rapidly trembling man flash through a series of sinister faces, one masked with what appears to be a plastic bag. On the dance floor, he sees Jezebel dancing seductively with a vaguely demonic entity. A lizard-like tail seems to penetrate her, and a devilish horn bursts from her gaping mouth. But perhaps most disturbing, a flirtatious fortune teller reads Jacob’s palms and coyly declares that he’s already dead. These strange occurrences increase in severity as Jacob reunites with his fellow veterans who may be experiencing the same frightening visions. Only a trusted chiropractor named Louie (Danny Aiello) seems capable of calming Jake’s fears and realigning his life.
In one of the genre’s most poignant twists, we learn that the palmist was right all along. Rather than a series of informative flashbacks, Jacob’s time in Vietnam is an objective reality. The film concludes with field medics pronouncing him dead, noting that the deceased soldier put up “one hell of a fight.” His time in New York with Jezebel has been a projection of his mind’s attempt to reconcile with oncoming death. Louie makes sense of these complex visions by paraphrasing the 14th-century theologian Meister Eckhart: “if you’re frightened of dying and… and you’re holding on, you’ll see devils tearing your life away. But if you’ve made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth.” Jacob concludes his time in New York by reuniting with his angelic son, Gabe, who gently leads him up a set of stairs and into a bright white light.
Past, present, and future merge together as Jacob finds peace and finally lets go.
Two decades after directing the cult classic Silent Hill, Christophe Gans uses the post-apocalyptic setting to explore similar themes of life and death. Adapted from the 2001 game Silent Hill 2, Return to Silent Hill follows James Sunderland (Jeremy Irvine) on a quest to find his missing girlfriend Mary (Hannah Emily Anderson), who begs him to meet her at “our place.” Like Lyne’s powerful film, Gans’ story plays out in a trio of timelines. We open with James meeting Mary at a bus stop overlooking the town after swerving to dodge an oncoming truck and plowing through her stacked suitcases. Charmed by this gorgeous woman, he offers to drive her back to the picturesque Silent Hill and eventually decides to stay. But flashbacks reveal trouble in paradise as Mary’s involvement with her late father’s cult puts a strain on their burgeoning relationship. When James glimpses a disturbing ritual in which the cult’s followers bathe in Mary’s blood, he breaks off their relationship, leaving Mary alone.
Upon receiving a cryptic letter from his estranged girlfriend, James returns to find an altogether different Silent Hill. Ash perpetually rains from the sky, and a morose survivor explains that the town has been decimated by fire and contamination. As he walks the foggy streets, James hears periodic sirens and radio static that warn him of monsters lurking nearby. A spindly wraith spurts acid from a gaping chest wound while giant cockroaches with humanoid faces crawl out of rapidly rotting floors. While searching for Mary, James discovers a massive mutant spider merged with the torso of a decapitated woman, but this creature is killed by one of the game’s most iconic threats, a muscle-bound monster known as Red Pyramid (Robert Strange). Wielding a gigantic knife that cracks the floor, this being’s head is obscured by a large, triangular helmet that hides a face of twisted rage.
As James slowly uncovers the town’s dark secrets, he finds Mary transformed into a monstrous moth with spindly claws that penetrate his soul. James awakens from this disturbing confrontation as a patient in a psychiatric ward. His concerned therapist explains that Mary actually died several months ago, and he’s been unable to say goodbye. As the truth crashes in, we meet Jake in what appears to be objective reality and find Mary lying on her deathbed in a sunny Silent Hill hospital room. She begs James to end her suffering, and he reluctantly smothers her to death. Only then do we realize that Silent Hill’s monsters are all manifestations of James’ grief and guilt designed to protect his fragile mind from this devastating memory.
The three timelines merge as James follows a vision of his healthy girlfriend to the hospital’s fiery roof and watches her transforming body ascend. Now, a terribly gorgeous moth-like entity, she offers him the forgiveness he so desperately needs. Having made peace with abandoning Mary in her time of need, James is finally ready to say goodbye. He wraps her body in a white sheet and places it inside his waiting car, then crashes into the nearby lake. We finally understand that James has returned to Silent Hill to die amidst these memories. Though some details have been altered, this devastating conclusion mirrors “In Water,” one of the game’s six possible endings. But like the dying Jacob Singer, Gans allows James to transcend his painful time on earth and enter a peaceful afterlife.
James gazes into his submerged rearview mirror, and a pair of headlights rapidly approaches. A blinding white light swells, transporting us back to the bus stop overlook and James’ first interaction with Mary. But this time, the lovestruck man seems aware of the turns their story will take, yet prepared to savor each moment of bliss. Smiling, they drive away from Silent Hill toward the promise of a happy life. Revisiting Eckhart’s prophecy, the demons of Silent Hill have tried to pull James’ life apart, but in finding peace with his painful past, they have become angels guiding him into the light.
Though markedly different in nearly every way, Jacob’s Ladder and Return to Silent Hill both cause us to reckon with the fleeting nature of life and the inescapable fact of death. But they also serve as gorgeous reminders that if we can reframe our fear and let go of our time on earth, we can find our way into paradise and an eternity spent with those we love.
In this day and age, the word “troll” is often used to describe various online nuisances. Yet as abundant and irksome as the modern troll can be, they aren’t usually as fearsome as their mythological counterparts. I’m not talking about the small and gentler versions that have become more common to see in media. No, there are much bigger and scarier trolls out there—and André Øvredal’s movie Troll Hunter is one of the best places to find them.
It doesn’t take long for Troll Hunter (or Trolljegeren) to dump the Blair Witch Project-esque setup and aim for something a lot fresher. The trajectory of the story is augmented by Otto Jespersen’s character Hans, the titular Troll Hunter. The second he comes barreling out of the deep, dark woods and shouts “troll” at the camera, this movie takes a turn into what feels like uncharted territory. Not only subject-wise, but also conceptually.
For fantastical and made-up subject matter in cinema, found footage is a fast way to add a guise of believability. After all, what we accept to be the most crucial aspect of documentaries—the truth—rubs off on pseudo-documentaries, despite our understanding of the pretense involved. That is what Øvredal delivered with Troll Hunter: a movie so convincing that some viewers wondered if trolls really do exist. So, had this been straightforwardly made, it likely wouldn’t have been as effective. Conventional narratives would be more inclined to treat something like trolls as flat out unreal, and never try to convince the audience to think otherwise.
Hans petrifies the three-headed Tusseladd troll.
The viewers, like the characters trailing Hans, are quickly thrown into the deeper end of that extraordinary story. They have to process all this new information while staying on the go. So, although there is no significant amount of meandering, narratively or physically, there is still a good amount of atmosphere, not to mention tension building. It’s never anything frightful, but then again, Troll Hunter isn’t your standard offering of horror; it’s more on the low end of the dark fantasy spectrum. We aren’t ever spirited away to a faraway world—we stay in rather familiar surroundings, as well as dip into those less so. The outcome is a movie where you’re constantly more in awe than in terror.
As fantasy fiction might do, Troll Hunter prefers not to deal with incredulity. There is no time to waste on doubt, as interviewer Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), soundperson Johanna (Johanna Mørck), and cameraman Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) all follow Hans around, recording whatever this character is willing to reveal about his bizarre job. Of course, the Troll Hunter himself is not an open book; in that respect, the diegetic documentary fails to fully capture and unpack the more interesting of its two subjects. Yes, all those giant, monstrous trolls are indeed incredible, but understandably, your mind wanders to their pursuer. What kind of person signs up for this gig and then chooses to stick with it for so long?
Reviews have called out Troll Hunter for its lack of character development. In regard to Thomas and his fellow documentarians, that criticism is valid, but bear in mind, they aren’t the focus of the story, either. Meanwhile, Hans is a well-crafted character. At least better than first realized. Before he was introduced, Hans had already grown tired of the troll grind. Fed up with that low compensation for his services, resentful of the bureaucracy, and wanting to expose his employer on a large scale, Hans’ discontent is glaring.
Then there are those finer details about the Troll Hunter, such as that indifference to both the natural splendor of his everyday surroundings and the affections of an obviously smitten colleague, that also suggest some level of despondency. So it is fair to say this movie doesn’t feature any sizable growth for its characters; however, the namesake isn’t underwritten. No doubt, putting a real-life character like Otto Jespersen in that role is partly why Hans is so fascinating—maybe even relatable.
Otto Jespersen as Hans the Troll Hunter.
There is always a small risk whenever using the term “mockumentary” to describe a found-footage movie, as the word could imply humor where there is none. In the case of Troll Hunter, the term’s usage is appropriate. Some folks have claimed the English-dubbed version has the more comedic tone, however, the Norwegian cut isn’t exactly humorless. Apart from the trolls’ absurd appearances, this is a movie where the characters nearly choke on the monsters’ farts, and Christians are like walking targets. Hans’ complete apathy towards everything is another cause of laughter. Overall, the comedy is intentionally dry and inconsistent. Unfunny, though? Absolutely not.
In a movie where endemic creatures are maltreated, as well as disavowed from living freely and peacefully, it’s hard not to notice the ecological message buried beneath the story. In addition to that is the unmistakable political satire. There is this whole business about intrusive and unsightly power lines—like trolls, they’re big blemishes on the land—that leads to what is perhaps the movie’s funniest moment. The scene in question is that one where certain electric lines, the ones secretly being used to keep the trolls at bay, go in a loop and don’t actually send power to any residents. Yet the monitors of said lines don’t find this at all weird. So it stands to reason that Øvredal was having a go at those who accept the government’s doings without question.
Looking past the fact that trolls aren’t actually real, this movie is an enlightening source of information. And not just for international audiences; Norwegians, too, get schooled about their homeland’s own mythology. It’s also evident from everything on screen that Øvredal and his crew were enthusiastic about the topic. The creature designs are the most indicative of that zeal; those imaginative yet myth-accurate manifestations are equally amusing and grotesque. One second you’re laughing at their phallic noses, the next you’re white-knuckling during a hairy sequence. Most surprisingly is how well the trolls’ visual effects hold up after fifteen years. It’s not all spotless, but on the whole, they remain impressive.
Vouching for a mockumentary about trolls isn’t easy, but those who do come around and give it a shot will more than likely be grateful for the recommendation. For Troll Hunter is a real find in that vast and varied genre we call “found footage“.
A bridge troll reaches up for food and finds Hans decked out in armor.
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