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.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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