by Those growing up with the Playstation 1 remember Silent Hill (1999) as the game that spiritually succeeded Resident Evil (1996) with a focus on atmospheric and psychological horror driven by storytelling but with comparably little action. 3D graphics were advanced enough for the first time to immerse players deeper into the horror experience through interaction than film. In other words, the game scared the hell out of a whole lot of people and helped define the horror genre. Adapting this to screen is no small feat and, despite the moderate budget by today’s standards, Christophe Gans ventured into a bolt adaptation of Silent Hill 2 (2001) that feels different than the first two movies Silent Hill (2006), also directed by Gans, and Silent Hill: Revelation (2012).
A lot of Silent Hill was inspired by the rather unknown film Jacob’s Ladder (1990) starring Tim Robbins. Robbins plays a young soldier wounded in the Vietnam War, struggling with post-traumatic stress inducing visions of a hell-like world laying over the actual New York City. These experiences come from his psyche, fighting his own guilt and are revealed to be a version of purgatory, lived through as he lay dying in a field hospital in Vietnam. None of it was real, playing with hopes and dreams and fears and regrets from a life never lived. It could be interpreted as character test before being admitted to heaven, inspired by the biblical image of Jacob’s ladder spanning from earth to heaven, or life to afterlife. Silent Hill referenced Jacob’s Ladder, among other works, conceptionally and visually, adding the ash rain from unextinguished fires. But neither in the game nor the first or second movie was it ever doubtlessly established what the characters were living through. Was it psychosis? Hallucination? Or was it in fact a supernatural overlay to the real world induced by an evil cult obsessed with torture and pain?
Return to Silent Hill is a loose adaptation of the videogame Silent Hill 2, habitually ranking high in all-time greatest videogame polls. It directly focuses on the personal experience of James Sunderland. Jeremy Irvine plays James emphasizing the mundane by design, restrained but relatable, meeting Mary Crane in a chance encounter almost ending in catastrophe. Hannah Emily Anderson portrays Mary in typical girl next door fashion, making it almost impossible to ever imagine a bad turn of events. When they start living together in Silent Hill, set beautifully by a lake, we already understand something valuable will be lost in the following story.
We only learn what happened between James and Mary throughout the story, slowly but steadily unfolding after James coming back to a devastated and almost abandoned Silent Hill when he receives a letter from Mary asking him to return. It is James’ return giving the title to the film, because this time, Silent Hill is a manifestation of his psychosis. Visually, apart from contrasting beautiful scenery with devilish nightmares, the film stays in line with the aesthetics already established throughout the series. It focuses on James’ personal story. For the first time there is a clear relation between a character and Pyramid Head, modelled after Silent Hill’s executioner and epitome of a desire for self-punishment. Whereas the homeless man and a survivor called Eddie represent character trades of James, the different sides of Mary are subtly embodied by two women and a girl, all wanting to leave with him. We follow James along his personal nightmare, self-induced as his personal purgatory to reform himself from guilt.
The story doesn’t just aim to make the audience feel sympathy for the characters. It is downright poignant to see James trying to find Mary. To bring back the irretrievably lost. First James’ and Mary’s former apartment, then the hospital is turned from a safe space to figurative stakes. Fire is a symbol for pain and punishment, but also for cleansing and rebirth. Only when James rejects Maria, a provocatively dressed reincarnation of Mary begging him to leave with her, he is allowed to find redemption. It was his discovery that Mary had been used not as a goddess but a sacrifice by her father and the cult following him ever since she was a child, drugging her for rituals, slowly intoxicating her body into submission, that made James feel disgust for her and being unable to love her fully, and accepting the cult members driving him away, that separated them. Embracing his guilt, the pain, and Mary as a whole finally enables James to break the nightmarish cycle beginning with her death and return to a happy life with her. The story ends where it begins but this, sadly, can hardly be understood as the end of a nightmare James woke out from. It is the final transition within a sequence: life – purgatory – heaven.
Return to Silent Hill is a refreshing take on the material delving deeper into psychology and the relationship between two people that lost each other without a chance to reconcile in life and only reunite in afterlife. This approach will probably not appeal to a big audience used to torture porn, CGI bloat and human grossness. It would’ve been easy, going that route, but then Return to Silent Hill wouldn’t have set itself apart. Maybe it would’ve looked even more eerie, had it been shot with conventional effects like Jacob’s Ladder but you cannot criticize a film for not forcefully being an anachronism. It has beautiful shots, good actors and uncanniness – if you’re willing to go beyond the visual spectacle and let the subconscious and psychology do its work through empathy. But it is doubtful the majority of moviegoers will go to some length for a full experience. It is not a perfect movie but it goes under the skin, holding itself well against its predecessors and the works that inspired it.
