Editorials
“Born From a Wish”: Revisiting ‘Silent Hill 2’s’ Extra Chapter
A few weeks ago, I wrote a 15th anniversary retrospective piece about Silent Hill 2, Konami’s 2001 sequel that has since been hailed as one of the greatest video game sequels of all time. As I wrote, Silent Hill 2 offered me, “…a story that was so nuanced, so brilliantly thought out, that it would forever change my view of how games were approached.”
In late 2001 (for Xbox) and late 2002 (for PS2), a special “extended” edition of the game came out that featured some simple revisions and updates. However, the big draw for these editions was the extra chapter “Born From a Wish”, which followed Maria and her journey up to meeting James Sunderland. Relatively short – it could be beaten in well under an hour – the addition was a chance for players to learn more about the character who seemingly teases and tempts James through her almost doppelgänger appearance of his deceased wife, Mary.
Today, I want to revisit that extra chapter. I want to dive back into Silent Hill and focus on Maria and the journey she underwent.
The game opens with Maria sitting in a chair in front of a mirror. In a bit, we find out that she’s in one of the rooms above the “Heaven’s Night” strip club in the middle of Silent Hill. She is aware of the dangers lurking outside in the fog and she is trying to come to terms with her situation. Does she want to fight and live? Does she want to give up and die? She claims that she doesn’t have any, “…reason to go on living” and yet she’s afraid of dying, of pain. All she wants is to, “…find somebody” as she doesn’t like being alone.
Right away, the game taps into a primal instinct amongst people. No one wants to be alone in scary and tough situations. We all want someone to be by our side, to give us comfort and support. That’s why characters in Night of the Living Dead and “The Walking Dead” are so conflicted when they come upon survivors. It’s not just a situation of, “Can they be trusted?” They also, even if it’s not explicitly shown, are facing this dilemma of safety in loneliness but comfort in company. “Born From a Wish” immediately lays out Maria’s mindset and her conundrum, which are entirely human in the midst of her supernatural, almost alien surroundings.
What sets apart Maria’s journey from James’ is that James doesn’t necessarily feel alone when he goes into Silent Hill. Before he even enters the town, he’s met Angela in the cemetery, so we know that there is someone else outside of this isolation. But Maria is thrust into the middle of the fog, her opening monologue expressly stating, “When I woke up, I was all alone.” James has people in his life, even if they met fleetingly. Maria, meanwhile, has no one. Her reason to push on isn’t because of a desperate need for closure, like James, or to quell the demons inside, like Angela, it is simply because she chooses to.
Within a few minutes of gameplay, Maria meets Ernest Baldwin at the Baldwin Estate, where the majority of this chapter takes place. A man behind a door that he refuses to open, they speak briefly, with Maria commenting on the insanity of the town while Ernest offers the alternate theory that it is they who are insane. This theory is compounded when later on in the Baldwin Estate, Maria stumbles across a teddy bear that she thinks would be a great gift for Laura, the little girl in the main story. However, Maria has never interacted with Laura as it was Mary who saw her frequently. Either Maria is insane or, as many believe, she is a creation of James’ guilt and suppressed desires manifesting into reality upon his arrival into town.
Maria finds out that Ernest is the father of Amy, a 7-year-old girl who tragically died. Left in an perpetual state of mourning, Ernest refuses to be seen, asking for Maria’s help through a locked door. Only after she helps him and more confusing and cryptic clues are shared between the two does the door unlock, allowing Maria to open it and find…nothing. Aside from a small table in the center of the room, there is nothing and no one.
Saddened by the tale she helped conclude, Maria wanders the streets in a haze. She comes to the wall where James and Laura have their first real encounter and holds her revolver to her head. The sadness and despair on her face is all too apparent as her finger rests against the trigger. Slowly, she lowers the gun and suddenly tosses it over the wall. She will not take her own life. Rather, she will find James or let the town take her, whichever comes first. “Born From a Wish” ends with Maria walking into the mist, slowly fading away and blurring into the city. We then hear James and Maria’s first encounter where she identifies herself after his confusion. Unfortunately, we know the rest.
What makes “Born From a Wish” so meaningful is, as mentioned above, the difference in the impetus from James to Maria. James has a mission, a goal that he must achieve in order to find some measure of peace. Maria has none of that. Even her own stand-alone story ends with a feeling of “what’s it all for?” It is only when she joins with James that there is a connection and a need for them to be together, even if just for the comfort of being close to someone for a few minutes.
As much as Silent Hill takes away, it can also give back. I believe that the town and Mary felt both rage and sadness at James and the actions he took at Brookhaven Hospital. For all the violence thrown at James, Mary ultimately gave him someone that he wanted. Even in death, she sent her love.
“Elevated Horror.” Of all the combinations in the English language, that one is the most insufferable.
It represents almost a decade of scary movies that, for the most part, took themselves too seriously. Horror responds to the moment, so its “why so serious” lean makes sense as we scuttle through the “worst of times” equation of Charles Dickens’ famous opening lines. But there’s still an opening and a need for a lighter approach; one that not only has fun with its audience but takes the piss out of a genre that is seemingly letting its newfound “respectability” go to its head.
Wes Craven believed devotees see horror films to let out their fears one primal scream at a time. At their core, these movies are roller coasters; they bring us as close to the edge as possible before pulling us back into a safety net of reality. The need for a bigger and badder coaster increases during times when the size of that net decreases.
There’s a thrill that comes from imagining being in a foot race with a madman, or outthinking the hordes of zombies on the other side of the door, plus the scavenger humans coming behind them. There’s even a rush that comes from imagining how one might deal with possession to see good triumph over evil in the end. It’s all about building tension and releasing it through catharsis. That cathartic release usually sounds like screams followed by laughter, which signals relief. Genre heavy hitters over the past 10 years offered very little of that respite when the credits rolled. Films like Hereditary, The Witch, Talk to Me, and even Smile (pick one) keep that tension going after the screen fades to black.
Hereditary
As the genre became obsessed with creating trauma metaphors, that lack of release made sense. Anyone with even a small sample size of traumatic experiences knows those emotions don’t magically resolve themselves in an allotted run time. But how much trauma can one take? Especially when there’s a mess going on outside that few of us can escape from. Movies offer that off-ramp, no matter how short.
Everything can’t be, nor should it be, “elevated.” Audiences need thoughtful explorations of life’s ills via monsters as much as they need murdering masked maniacs with kitchen knives. And no, it doesn’t have to go any deeper than that. Sometimes, a knife is just a knife, and it’s still worth our time and respect. As weird as it sounds, that simplicity is comforting not in spite of the trauma but because of it.
The worst of times should manifest more than just anguish. People need to laugh just as much as they need to think seriously about this moment in time. Even the Scream franchise forgot the meta rock upon which it built its church when the latest foray sacrificed the subtle comedy for serious drama. Scary Movie returned at the perfect moment. It provides the necessary laughs, but it’s not a cure-all.
This isn’t a call for Scary Movie imitators but a return to a mainstream landscape where Killer Klowns from Outer Space sat with The Serpent and the Rainbow, nestled neatly with the latest Nightmare on Elm Street, which took nothing away from The Vanishing.
They Live
Even They Live, John Carpenter’s horror sci-fi satire sandwich, kept its tongue firmly in cheek while discussing serious ideas still relevant in 2026. Yes, a film about aliens taking over the world through subliminal messaging only visible through coded sunglasses is, in fact, a tad silly. Carpenter understood that mainstream horror can’t become so self-important that it never looks itself in the mirror and laughs at that inherent silliness.
The thing is, horror historically excels at poking fun at itself. Most of the Scream franchise, The Cabin in the Woods, or The Blackening show adoration without kowtowing. They recognize tropes and trappings but invert them for an audience already in on the joke, but one that also finds solace in said conventions. This keeps the genre on its toes; once something gets parodied, it’s usually time to evolve. That breeds new ideas and fresh filmmakers, which not only strengthen the genre’s collective voice but also amplify it.
Get Out, as “elevated” as some critics want us to believe it is, is a cathartic, populist scary movie that spoke to an untapped audience rather than speaking down to them. Backrooms is one of the biggest horror hits in years, partially because it’s fine-tuned for modern-day teenagers instead of their parents. Movies like these tell everyone the genre is open for business; open for innovation and, yeah, open for new ways in which people can lovingly poke fun at with a wink and a nudge.
Horror needs dread as much as it needs laughter.
Catharsis is just as important as tension, and pulpy populism has the same merit as more high-brow material. Respectability shouldn’t come at the expense of an experience akin to walking through a haunted house. At a time when joy seems in short supply, horror should look to its past to map out its future, and make things just a tad brighter for audiences.
Backrooms
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