Silent Hill (film)

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Spoiler Warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Silent Hill

Directed by	Christophe Gans
Produced by	Samuel Hadida, Don Carmody, Konami, Team Silent
Written by	Roger Avary, Christophe Gans, Nicolas Boukhrief
Music	Jeff Danna, Akira Yamaoka
Starring	Radha Mitchell Sean Bean Laurie Holden Jodelle Ferland Deborah Kara Unger Alice Krige Tanya Allen Kim Coates
Distributed by	TriStar Pictures
Release date(s)	April 21, 2006
Budget	$50,000,000
Running time	127 min.

The name Silent Hill may refer to multiple subjects. Please see Silent Hill for other uses of the term.

Silent Hill is a 2006 adventure horror film directed by Christophe Gans and written by Roger Avary. The story is an adaptation of the first Silent Hill video game created by Konami. The film includes elements from Silent Hill, Silent Hill 2, and Silent Hill 3 and music from Silent Hill 4: The Room. It was released in theaters on April 21, 2006 by TriStar pictures and is 127 minutes long.

The film follows Rose, a loving mother, who takes her adopted daughter to Silent Hill, the only clue to her daughter's sleepwalking condition. After being knocked unconscious in a car crash, she awakens to find her daughter missing and the town engulfed in fog and falling ash. Rose searches the town for her daughter and discovers her daughter's connections to the town of Silent Hill.

Plot

Sharon, Christopher, and Rose.

Rose Da Silva, the protagonist, and her husband Christopher Da Silva are concerned about their adopted daughter Sharon who has been experiencing severe nightmares and sleepwalking. Their only clue to the girl's condition is her repetition of the name "Silent Hill." Desperate for answers, Rose decides to take Sharon to the town of Silent Hill, despite Christopher's opposition. On the drive to Silent Hill, Rose encounters a police officer, Cybil Bennett, who asks if she needs help, but Rose declines. Showing a hint of suspicion, Cybil takes note of Rose's license plate. Rose proceeds on her drive to Silent Hill and notices Cybil behind her, but she drives faster in order to lose her. Rose is knocked unconscious in a car crash while trying to avoid a little girl's figure walking in the road. She awakens to find that Sharon is missing and that she made it to Silent Hill, West Virginia.

Rose searches the empty, fog-enshrouded streets of the town for her missing child. After following what she thinks is her daughter's figure into a dark alley, she experiences her first shift into the Otherworld. She then stumbles across a mutilated figure clothed in mining gear hung to a wire fence, and is immediately attacked by a Grey Child. Dozens more show up, causing her to flee into a nearby dilapidated bowling alley. She falls to the floor, but before they can kill her the Grey Children and the surface of the room around her all begin to disintegrate, and she loses consciousness. Upon awakening, she finds herself back in the Fog World. Venturing out, she meets a mysterious woman, Dahlia Gillespie, who speaks of the terrible things done to her own daughter, Alessa, by the townspeople. Dahlia claims that Sharon is actually her own daughter and not Rose's.

Rose runs back to her unresponsive car and finds a drawing with a picture of a school inside it. Soon afterwords, she encounters Cybil again, who initially attempts to arrest her, an extreme reaction implying her suspicion of child abduction. Upon discovering that the road out of the town has mysteriously disappeared, they see a monster in a straitjacket made out of its own flesh coming their way. Cybil thinks it might a civilian until it shoots boiling acid at her. While Cybil shoots at the monster, Rose takes this opportunity to run to Midwich Elementary School, using bus signs to help locate it.

Meanwhile Christopher has studied reports and online articles on Silent Hill, and the dangers it possesses. Worried for his wife's safety, he takes it upon himself to drive out and rescue both her and their daughter. He is reluctantly aided by Officer Thomas Gucci. Under the guise of keeping Christopher safe from the harms of the underground coal fire and other natural dangers of the town, Gucci guides the worried father around. The officer reveals his father once owned the local barber shop, and talks about how everyone left due to the coal fire. He sympathizes with Christopher, but is more immediately concerned with the man's safety, and is keen to leave. Eventually they reach the school, which is where Rose currently is while stuck in the Otherworld. Although Sharon's parents cannot see each other, at one point they walk through the same area at the same time, and Christopher believes he feels Rose's presence, but he and Gucci ultimately leave the town without much hope of finding her.

Inside the school, Rose sees the figure of a child who looks like Sharon run into the girl's bathroom. She enters the bathroom and opens one of the bathroom stall doors to discover the body of a janitor wrapped in barbed wire with a piece of a hotel keychain in its mouth. Rose takes the keychain and the bathroom shifts into the Otherworld. She encounters Cybil again and they survive Pyramid Head's attacks. Rose and Cybil then decide to go to the Grand Hotel from the clue on the keychain.

Meanwhile, Christopher has ignored Gucci's pleas for him to go home, and has broken into the Toluca County Archives in a desperate search for any information that could help him in his search. Here he discovers documents showing the town was abandoned after a terrible fire 30 years prior, along with a photo of Dahlia's daughter, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Sharon. Christopher is apprehended by Officer Gucci when he tries to question Sharon's orphanage, and is told to stop investigating Silent Hill or risk being arrested. In exasperation, he finally relents and heads home.

Back in Silent Hill, Rose and Cybil make it to the Grand Hotel, where they encounter a young woman named Anna. They visit Room 111 and discover a secret passage to a hidden sanctuary, where Rose finds Dark Alessa, a dark doppelganger of Alessa. Dark Alessa quickly disappears after suddenly catching fire. The Darkness begins to fall again and the women run to the church.

On the way to the church, Anna doesn't survive Pyramid Head's attacks and Rose and Cybil find refuge in the church, where they discover the remaining townspeople, a religious cult, headed by a woman named Christabella. Christabella tells them that a 'demon' controls the town, and that Rose must face the darkness of hell if she wants to find Sharon. After convincing Christabella that she wants to find the 'demon' for answers, Rose is taken to a hospital in the town, along with Cybil. Here, Christabella discovers the likeness between Sharon and Alessa from Rose's locket and condemns Rose and Cybil as witches. Cybil is captured as she defends Rose, who escapes the clutches of the cult and descends in an elevator into the basement of the hospital.

Rose encounters the badly burned Alessa, lying in a hospital bed unable to walk or speak and Dark Alessa, who she learns is the manifestation of the dark side of Alessa's soul. In an extended flashback, Rose discovers that Silent Hill has had a history of ritual witch burnings, and that an attempt to burn Alessa 30 years ago went disastrously awry, resulting in the devastating fire destroying the town. Rose is told that Sharon is the manifestation of Alessa's remaining innocence and goodness, and was taken to the orphanage and subsequently adopted by Rose and Christopher. Rose agrees to help Alessa gain her final revenge to save her daughter.

Rose enters the church soon after Cybil has already been burned to death by the townspeople, and Sharon is about to suffer a similar fate. She confronts the townspeople and Christabella with her new knowledge of the truth, attempting to convince the cult that they are in denial of their own fate. Christabella stabs Rose, causing her blood to drip onto the church floor, releasing Alessa's tainted essence and opening a portal in the Otherworld. Alessa and Dark Alessa rise out of a pit, and proceed to kill Christabella and the townspeople with long tangles of barbed wire, leaving Dahlia, Rose, and Sharon the only survivors. Sharon and Dark Alessa lock eyes, causing Sharon to faint. As the darkness lifts, Sharon is acting strangely and shows supernatural powers similar to Alessa's powers, leading to the conclusion that the souls have recombined. Rose and Alessa leave Silent Hill and return home. Nevertheless, although Rose and Alessa are in the same room as Christopher (who has also returned home), they cannot see each other and appear to still be in the Fog World.

Cast

Radha Mitchell - Rose Da Silva
Sean Bean - Christopher Da Silva
Jodelle Ferland - Sharon Da Silva/Alessa Gillespie/Dark Alessa
Laurie Holden - Cybil Bennett
Deborah Kara Unger - Dahlia Gillespie
Kim Coates - Officer Thomas Gucci
Tanya Allen - Anna
Alice Krige - Christabella
Roberto Campanella - Pyramid Head/Colin the Janitor

Music

The score to Silent Hill is almost completely comprised of various themes from the game series (Silent Hill 1-3, with a few from Silent Hill 4), that has been re-recorded and remixed. For example, "Promise (Reprise)" is a prominent score throughout the film, and is often used to accompany Alessa and her past. Some of the vocal tracks are present, with Mary Elizabeth McGlynn's "You're Not Here" playing through part of the credits, set to a 3D animation of various environments from the film. Though an official soundtrack has not been released, there is a digital DVD rip available electronically on iTunes, called Silent Hell: Music from the Silent Hill Movie.

Trivia

In the original script, there were only female characters. Sean Bean's character was added and the script was approved.

The name Cheryl spray painted under the bridge

At the start of the film, when Rose pauses inside the tunnel while looking for Sharon, several recognizable items are spray painted on the wall in the background, including: "Cheryl", "The GMC logo", and "The Beatles".

A symbol very similar to the game's Virun VII Crest can be seen twice in the Otherworld version of Midwich Elementary School when Dark Alessa appears at her desk.

There were over 100 different outfits made for Radha Mitchell, changing subtly from a dark chocolate shade to blood red.

Radha Mitchell didn't wash her hair through most of the filming to help the dirty unwashed look of her character.

The character of Dark Alessa is never credited in the movie's cast list, however, she is named as one of Jodelle's characters on the official site.
The town of silent hill in the film has been approved by Roger Avery as a reference to the town of Centrailia, Pennsylvania, which also has a coal fire that still burns today.

Promotional newspaper

At some theaters, a 3-page promotional newspaper was handed out with details about the main story.