Warning: I'm going to talk about some horrible things. Sexual violence, exploitation, patriarchy, and mental health.
Since the changing of the leaves started, I've really been embracing the season. I always like to move with the shifting weather and let it guide my emotional state, my interests, festivities. As such, I've been playing a lot of horror games, especially classics from the Playstation. I'd done really passionate reviews about why I love the Resident Evil games, and after clearing the first three, well it would be fair if I went back to Silent Hill with my fresh adult sensibilities and gave it the same sort of treatment. Silent Hill is not quite like Resident Evil, but it has many similarities and is held to some of the same levels of esteem. Though, if you might've noticed, Silent Hill is considered to be the more cinematic and artful series of the two; more cerebral even.
It has a huge reputation following it. It's one of the most psychologically inclined series out there, as people say. It is all about inner demons, its iconic mist and misery are well known even to people who hate horror. I often look outside on a grim and foggy day and say "Damn, it's like Silent Hill out there" as a joke. I can never say I was ever so engaged to the game and had no deep loyalties to it, at least to the degree of others I've seen. Still, as soon as I started playing, something about it completely latched onto my psyche and sent me into something of an intellectual spiral in a way Resident Evil could not, even though I felt Resident Evil games were far more 'perfect'. Silent Hill is unbearably messy, raw, miserable, and introspective in a way that completely earns its reputation.
I think the most important place to really start is with what we see of Harry. He's a bit hysterical and in search of his daughter, wandering into this miserable misty and unsafe town drawing heavily from the aesthetics of Stephen King's The Mist. A little bit of humanity left in the cold husk of a city in Cybil, who gives him a gun, setting us on our journey. And I have to say, Harry is a bit of a moron. Many things happen to him, many narrative complexities will unfold at his feet and he will inappropriately ask about his daughter and say "What? What's going on? Our friend Harry has very little situational awareness and even less critical thinking skills at his disposal. The game makes it clear through his goofiness: this is not about him. We are stumbling through other peoples stories just as he is, and he is more our surrogate than a character at times.
As we step properly into the world we can get a look at its environment and the way it chooses to present itself. Rather than making any use of pre-rendered backgrounds or using any other tricks of cheesing in extra detail, we get basically everything we look at in real-time. Many people have already expressed how it was possible to manage something at this scale with its clever use of the fog in loading and unloading parts of the game. It all leads to this wonderfully crunchy and low resolution look which has had a lasting impact on games today. Everything is not the most detailed, but you can glean the texture, the essence of everything so easily; it's a very tactile game. It succeeds in its own unique way apart from other horror games on the platform.
The second most pressing thing beyond the looks is the camera. Silent Hill being a more cinematic game makes a lot more use of film techniques. An almost found footage style, disorienting fixed camera angle at times, even using a dutch angle in the most chaotic moments. A careful hand shaping what and where you see the most important details. But we also get something new in the form of a frustrating and finicky over the shoulder free-cam. It isn't very intuitive and can get downright stupid in unintended ways, but with the shortcomings of no analog controls I can't entirely blame the game. It works well enough and you can use L2 to readjust it, which.. sometimes doesn't even work. You will be fighting with the camera as you would an enemy in some of the games worst moments, and it creates a friction that I came to find endearing as I spent more time with the game. The difficulties of the camera are simply another hazard to surmount, to learn and get intimate with.
On this note, the entire game itself is this beautifully burred device that's irritating to even behold. It's something of a loose consensus of many fans that the games have terrible gameplay but wonderful atmosphere. While I don't necessarily agree with this, I fully understand what they mean, because the game is not very well lubricated. It pushes back against you, it has edges you can get caught on, points of frustration and challenge not just to your abilities but also the very way you think and solve problems throughout the game. It all slowly unfolds into something beautiful, like a labyrinth. More on labyrinths later before the mental illness fully slips out of me.
Something I'd like to express my love of with the game and its visual presentation more specifically are the wonders of the industrial mundane. Electrical boxes, chain-link fences, generator rooms, control panels, switches, diodes, bridges, boiler rooms and furnaces, sewer systems. All of it is so wonderful to me, the world of analog technology, the cold and artificial language of such a manufactured environment. I've lived in the rust belt for half a decade now, and in my walks I've simultaneously felt at home and threatened by these now-everyday parts of my landscape. I don't get very intimate with them in the real world, but I do in the game here, and this strikes on my latent fears of what depth there might be in the industrial corners of my environment, as well as my innocent curiosity in understanding and celebrating the dull municipal machinery that runs in the background of daily life, necessary for society to even function hidden in plain sight.
I adore the radio you get in the beginning of the game. It serves the purpose of alerting you to enemies near you, each with their own unique frequency, buzzing and screeching with the swelling of music which projects outright terror to a level no other Silent Hill game has yet to accomplish. It cements this feeling I've had in my worst moments, that the presence of others is something of a threat. In contrast, the pleasant buzz of white noise is always something I could take comfort in. There's an ebb and flow to the use of noise in the game, vacillating between paranoia and fear in one end of the spectrum, and the comfort of being alone on the other.
The music works alongside the radio and noise to a masterful degree. Akira Yamaoka is often praised and rightfully so for his ambient works and contributions to the soundtracks for all of these games. This here is not so much ambient in spirit, but more in the realm of dark post-industrial soundscapes of terror and misery. It's like the music of Coil, of Nurse with Wound, of Throbbing Gristle. It guides the fear and levity with a heavier hand than the radio static. The radio is facilitated by the enemy design, and the music by the level design, and both are tag teaming you into a feeling of helplessness, fear, misery, and a false sense of security in many cases where by all logic it seems like you're temporarily safe.
The overworld enemies we see at first speak to the absurd, I feel. It's something I often joke about, that such a scary and highly esteemed game will make you fight dogs, pterodactyls, and gorillas in the streets of such a serious and shocking game. Nothing says psychological horror like pterodactyls, of course. But like many other things in the game, it has a purpose and reveals more of its hows and whys the deeper you plunge into the labyrinth.
As with any labyrinthine game are the puzzles throughout the levels which you need to solve to unlock the correct doors. Leading you around and around, backtracking in spirals. The puzzles themselves can have some excellent setup. You will often run into things that seem like they'd be immediately important, coming to find that they only have relevance to the very last portion of the game and have put the idea of using it and approximately where it might be in your head far before you can even solve it. My favorite puzzle overall is the zodiac one, much of them follow a similar kind of logic. You are meant to decode an extra meaning and sequence most of the time, out of context clues in the same area. It never really reaches the level of moon logic, I think.
The weapons feel so wonderfully satisfying to use, to take care of all the enemies you'll be running into. With the limited resources and risk of damage, you'll be tempted to use your favorite melee weapon of choice, mine being the hammer. The visceral feel of completely crushing something with my own hands, it makes me want to scream, it makes me feel alive. The handgun is an excellent utility as well. You'll probably be using it most of the time, being the safest tool and with the most plentiful bullets. I like to keep my shotgun for the late game only, and the rifle for the final boss exclusively.
On the labyrinth, on the changing landscape, it's the focal point at which the real spirit of the game is let out. The town itself pulls you deeper, weaves you in and around the various named streets as the earth opens up to shape your path and wall you off from its truths, from the answers, and through the exact path it wants to tell you. It ensnares you, it ensnares everyone close to you, close to Harry, pulling you deeper into itself. Have you noticed, as each area gets blocked off, it has the character of an actual spiral just to get into the school? How it all wraps around into Central Silent Hill? More spiraling, more unfolding, more pulling you deeper into the psychological torment.
There was a book that came out a year after Silent Hill, was in development for ten years, and I can't help but constantly make the comparisons in my mind. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, about a similarly labyrinthine house in an existentially, psychologically, even cosmically terrifying way as the town in Silent Hill. And while these two things have nothing to do with each other, they have a similar character, similar techniques and storytelling that I can't help but feel they were a match made for each other to explain what goes on in the story. The house and Silent Hill both take on a unique character of their own and hold impossibilities within them. They unleash a nightmare which rips into the very fabric of your life, of your psyche. A story told through echoes, what you see is an echo relayed by our perspective character. Unbearable pain which does not even feel real, from a dubious source trying to describe something indescribable and illusory.
As you plunge deeper, first in the school, again in the hospital, you enter a nightmare. It's evident that the worst memories and traumas in this miserable town have been brought to life. At that point in the story, it isn't exactly clear why it's there or what the nightmare really represents, as the spiral moves up and down and returns to different points. Snaking around a terrible core, all we can do at this point is speculate. What we know is the nightmare is this unbearable phantasm of violent children slowly crawling to rip and tear us apart, doctors and nurses trying to restrain and force us down. It has a quality and aesthetic to it very reminiscent of the artwork of Francis Bacon and of the movie Jacob's Ladder. Rust, sepsis, blood, sickness, a comfort in isolation and danger around others, flayed bodies, objectification, nude splayed bodies, eggs, worms, the transformation into moths, and a terribly persistent rotting.
As it all goes deeper, the very town itself shows its true face. The hell of the worst moments of those dungeons comes out and we can look at the town in- No you can't. Actually the enemies are completely hounding you and turning you away from the truth. Where it was easy to fight enemies and take your time at one point, it now becomes pants-pissing terror even to get from place to place. We haven't had the time to truly understand anything yet, but by now we've met all of the supporting characters. Alessa, a mysterious girl with odd traits mirroring our daughter Cheryl. Lisa, a terrified nurse at the hospital who clings to you for comfort. Kaufman, a standoffish and mysterious doctor from the same hospital. And lastly Dahlia, an oddly cryptic occultist who has merely pointed us at targets and given us ominous key items, speaking of religion and the darkness at the center of the town.
For my route, which was the Good+ ending, it's at the point where everything truly unravels into its proper form right around the time you make it to the Resort area. Kaufman has become linked to the drug trafficking, as well as a mysterious liquid deliberately being kept from anyone's knowledge to a completely paranoid degree. A more menacing side of Dahlia comes out, as well as a revelation of helplessness in Alessa. At the center of the town, we understand that Alessa is a victim, the darkness of the town is her darkness, and Dahlia holds a certain patriarchal control over her. There is far too much to disentangle here, so I'm going to get more abstract and out of order simply for my own sake. Because the narrative of the game, just like the town is very labyrinthine.
At the center of the labyrinth is the Minotaur. The child of Minos, cursed into this prison, into this hell, made a monster of. Like Theseus, we brazenly burst into the labyrinth to slay Asterion, aiding this ironic tragedy. The darkness of the town, ascribed to the vicious Minotaur alleged to have been victimizing people, itself a victim. Our funny Hellraiser device given to us by Dahlia traps and ensnares Alessa into her inevitable death-to-be and finality of her abuse. And Harry was an accessory to this patriarchal abuse and exploitation, and this is one of his true narrative purposes beyond simply being our surrogate. Unlike with the Minotaur, there's a deeper irony in Harry's actions. It was all for his daughter, to spare his own child at the expense of the suffering of other girls who don't have the luxury of someone looking out for them. This is one way Patriarchy is reinforced and upheld, this very selfish approach to justice.
So now, the labyrinth completely stripped bare of all its walls, we can see at the center of Silent Hill that it is a story about Patriarchy. It's about systems of abuse, of exploitation, parasitic ownership of women's bodies, rape, and the womb as a means to completely dehumanize and control Alessa. The nature of the town, the mist, the monsters, the nightmare, the psychological terror. Not simply the Bull of Minos, but more the Bull of Phalaris as it goes through a metamorphosis of pain and abuse, a screaming victim in the brazen bull projecting her psyche out in haunting echoes which lash out in every direction, pushing and pulling people indiscriminately fearing more harm, more control, and seeking release as the fires slowly roast her to death.
As we weave backwards back out through the center of the labyrinth, we see everything with new eyes in the Nowhere. The school and hospital both take on a new and more depressive meaning. The doctors and nurses especially are some of her greatest fears in that they maintain and directly enforce her suffering. The school, a warping and distortion of her isolation and worst fears, of people like her which reject and hate her. The pterodactyls and gorillas, I feel like I don't even need to say what these represent because it should be obvious if you were paying attention.
Still, it's not just Alessa who gets victimized in situations like these. Anyone is fair game, and we should show empathy for any situation where this kind of patriarchal abuse and exploitation are happening. We need to be challenging it, otherwise we end up passively reinforcing and tolerating its existence. Alessa and Cheryl are two sides of the same coin, the same person in spirit, even. What happens to Alessa is relevant to what happens to Cheryl, and this is a very purposeful statement on the more broad systemic implications of these systems it all alludes to. Cybil becomes parasitic influence to the town as well, a simultaneous victim and carrier of this malice. Even worse is Lisa realizing she's the very same as she faces an ego death before your very eyes in one of the most heartbreaking and sentimental scenes in the entire game. It still haunts me.
Alessa while I may be tempted to compare Alessa to Persephone or Izanami, I feel like neither of those give her credit for her part in the story. As it all comes towards its climax, it's clear that her pain, her loss of personhood, the way much of her soul is gone to carry something that itself is malformed and soulless, for the sake of a high control group, a cult, a religion, a town, a society, a patriarchal system; in completely disempowering her, it shows an extremely potent agony and desire for change, subversion, and transformation, but not one she can do alone. This is where Kaufman and Harry in their passive and unwitting support of this abuse, can finally turn around and act for justice. But then this raises two open questions. What does the cult mean? What does justice look like? I can only speak from my own interpretations, as I have the entire review here. You will find I don't like to approach it wiki style, I am making my own interpretations and think you should too.
From my own experiences, what I've seen, and my own understanding of the cult, I see it this way: It's obviously a group of people who represent a particular tradition which they felt was harmed in the process of making Silent Hill a more viable town to live in. It's a very high control group and seated in very conservative values and certainly are not strangers to treating women as property and objects. They seek to use a particular set of occult practices historically drawn in malice and exploitation of others for their own benefit. The practices otherwise known as Demonolatry, and this type of self-serving Goetia can correlate easily with the exploitative aims of fascism, which is to say a palingenetic force, a rebirth of the world into one of control, nationalism, and the expending and extermination of anything outside its purview, one where there is a stratified exploited and victimized class, almost always women and different ethnic groups and identities drawn up as outsiders.
And what more of a distinct way to represent the evils at the heart of this town than to make the final boss of the entire game an Incubus? A demon with explicit intention of violating women in their sleep and forcing unwanted pregnancies. And so, the solution to all of this, of justice, the game decides is through a rebirth set on the terms of the victim and through the people who stand up and break the mold of oppression and control to facilitate something new, something different and resistive. It's not exactly clear what's happening, but it's ultimately an ending of redemption. Where this destroyed life is reborn and can start again, not under the thumb of Patriarchy, but something different, something more free. While fascists believe in palingenesis, so do people like me, like Team Silent, like feminists, and people of moral conviction. Let a better world be born from this horrible one, through our actions, our sacrifices we make for the sake of others, empathy, of reaching out to victims and making the right choice.
This might sound particularly charged and leaning really hard to a particular perspective and conclusion, but I can't help it. I can't help it because I've been a victim too, but not of the same specifics as Alessa. It's just felt. It's felt in a painful and ugly way that makes me shake, at times makes me want to scream or simply lay in bed until the next day. Sometimes I wonder if I can ever purge it all out of me. Sometimes, very rarely, when I'm at my worst and could feel it suffocating me so unbearably, a little bit of that Nightmare, that Nowhere seeps in. Call it psychosis, call it dissociation, call it intrusive thoughts, visions, maladaptive daydreaming, but I see that rot, blood, gore, rust, encroaching from the corners of my vision and completely taking over. Sometimes when you feel like you can't breathe, but you can hear your heart beating wildly, the only thing you can really do is just freeze until it fades and passes.
I've had really odd and unnerving dreams lately. Maladaptive daydreams too. Nothing so painful or extreme like I'd felt before, but more forlorn. This was happening before I played the game, but I had visions in which I was a little girl like Alessa's own psychic projections. I remember scenes that were so profoundly beautiful, golden sunsets, strange hotels, mountains and forests and car trips with smiling families. I try to remember the full context but it always escapes me. The further it slips away, the more I'm pulled into real nightmares, and I'm a participant in creating nightmares for others. Hospitals and hotels in which the staff are not attacking people but only projecting a particular disdain. Lost, helpless, and in these dreams I can feel my influence making others feel the same way as me. It feels so real, and at times makes me scared I might actually have a dream linked with someone else and spread my malice into their emotional world. Of course, this is nonsense. This isn't how dreams work. But it's the irrational panic and stress of dream logic. I wake up, I shrug it off. A new day starts. The fear of my own suffering and trauma ripping into the fabric of the people around me stops being an irrational dream fear and takes on a new face, a self hatred that my moods and personality might indirectly hurt others, because of what I've experienced, because of how it shaped me. Because harm is taught and is carried and perpetuated by cycles and systems and I am just as much subject to them as the people who hurt me.
How can I even move on from these feelings, I sometimes think to myself. Spiraling, spiraling, swaying in and out of the nightmare, the static, the alarming noise, isolation, then the comfort of friends and people who care for me around me. It's a process. A metamorphosis, like Alessa, like moth. Shaping a new world, new chances for people who come into this world and who could use a better experience than me. Everyone deserves that, but there is no real incentive for people to be the one to help build that world, because truthfully it's really hard. It's really easy to fall into these systems of harm and exploitation and it's why people do it. It's why Silent Hill is what it is. It's why not everybody is a feminist, an anti-fascist, anti-racist. We can't just be bystanders. Learn, feel, say something, do something.
Oct 16, 2025
