silent hill continued

Silent hill follows the 3-act structure
B we are introduced to the main characters and rose takes her daughter to silent hill the beginning finishes when the car crash happens

M the middle starts with rose waking up after the crash and looks for her daughter this is the main start of the film and lasts for most of the duration. This part of the film is split into segments as rose finds a clue in one location which takes her to a new location, which makes up a chapter and the transitions between worlds also make chapters.

E the ending starts when rose goes down into the hospital basement and discovers to truth about her daughter and her linkage to silent hill, then dark alessa gets her revenge on the cult, the souls of alessa combine and they go home.

silent hill - naritive elements

Themes:

Motherhood
The director states that motherhood was an integral theme and he wanted to show good mothers and bad mothers.

Rose is the good mother — she blindly sacrifices everything to try to help her daughter.

Dhalia has made mistakes — she failed to protect her daughter from the school children, the janitor, and even her own sister. She went to get help, but it was too late and her daughter ended up burned.

Cybill, though not a mother is good, as the secondary hero she is clearly protective of Sharon.

Christabella is also a representation of a bad mother she is aunt to Alessa and Alessa blames her for what happened.

Witchcraft
Motifs of fire and burning can be seen in many different parts of the film, and the Silent Hill inhabitants shout “Witch!” when they are threatened by others.

Alessa is thought to be a witch because Dhalia refused to name a father for her. She is called “a sin”, taunted in class, raped, and finally burnt almost to death because of this.

Dhalia, who went against her sister’s wishes and tried to save her daughter, is an outcast, a blasphemer, and a witch. She causes a Pyramid Head to kill a woman who has been calling her witch.

Rose and Cybill are both called witches. Cybill is burnt alive and Rose is stabbed in the chest by Christabella.

Symbols:

The armless man monster represents Alessa Gillespie's hospitalization.

Grey Children are manifestations of Alessa's memory of children teasing her at school and represent Alessa's own screams as the cult burned her alive and they burn from the inside out continuously, as Alessa did.

Pyramid Head may be off a painting Alessa saw before she was burned alive or may be Alessa's incarnation of her father an authoritative figure punishing those that had punished her.

Conflict – when Rose is attacked by pyramid head the scene is the main form of conflict in the movie, the character is the most feared and powerfull in the film so when the main character comes into contact with the monster it is a memorable and scary point in the film.

Foreshadowing- the similarities between Alessa and Sharon foreshadows the climax which reveals that they are one person and they are different parts of that persons soul (good, evil)

Climax – this is when Dark Alessa kills the cult and the souls combine this is the highest point in the movie as it is full of action/gore and the ending is revealed (the origin of Alessa is explained and her souls combine)

Resolution – after the souls of Alessa has been combined they go back home but Alessa is part of the fog world and therefore Rose cannot see Christopher when this is realised the movie ends.

Rising action – the film is based on a game that contains elements of adventure and puzzle solving and this is used in the film as at various points Rose finds clues as to where to find her daughter such as the drawing of the school and the item from the hotel in the janitor’s mouth. This makes the story progress and Rose gets closer to the truth and her daughter.

synopsis of silent hill

Rose and her husband Christopher are concerned about their adopted daughter Sharon who has been sleepwalking and having nightmares about a town in West Virginia so Rose takes Sharon to the town. On the way, a police officer named Cybil Bennett asks Rose if she needs help but declines and continues but the police officer gives chase on her motorbike when rose takes the road up to the town.

During this chase Rose and her daughter arrive at the town but Rose crashes the car in an attempt to avoid a mysterious child standing in the middle of the road. Rose is knocking unconscious and when she wakes up, Sharon is nowhere to be seen, and a strange mist has formed with ash falling from the sky.

Rose continues on foot into the town in search of her daughter, where the streets appear to be empty until she encounters what looks to be her daughter's figure in the mist, she follows this figure into a dark alley where she experiences her first shift into the Otherworld. She then stumbles across a mutilated figure in mining gear hanging from a wire fence, and is attacked by a Grey Child. Dozens more show up, causing her to flee into a dilapidated bowling alley. She falls to the floor and the room around her disintegrates, and she loses consciousness.

Rose awakens in the fog world where she finds a strange woman named Delilah who claims that Sharon is her daughter. Rose runs back to her car and finds a drawing of a school. She then meets Cybil who arrests her for child abduction but on the way back from the town they find the road out of the town has disappeared and a creature that has a straitjacket made out of its own flesh appears. It shoots boiling acid at Cybil and Rose runs to the School.

Meanwhile, Christopher has researched the history of the town and has set off to rescue them as every had left due to a coal fire down in the mines but when he gets there rose is stuck in the fog world and therefore cannot be found.

Rose sees the figure of the child again and follows it into the bathroom where she finds the corpse of the janitor wrapped in barbwire with a hotel keychain in his mouth, she goes into the otherworld and meets with Cybil again but are attacked by pyramid head, which is a monster with a big knife.

At the hotel they meet a woman named Anna, who appears to be mentally unstable as she was born in the otherworld. They go to the room that the keychain belongs to and find a secret passage to a sanctuary where rose finds dark Alessa, a doppelganger of Delilah’s daughter.

The darkness begins to fall and everyone runs to the church but Anna is caught by pyramid head who rips her skin off and throws it at the church covering rose and Cybil in blood. At the church the remaining townspeople seem to have formed a cult run by Christabella who informs rose and Cybil that the town is controlled by a demon and rose must face the darkness of hell to find Sharon.

They go to the hospital but Christabella sees the similarities between Alessa and Sharon and calls them witches but rose escapes to the basement as Cybil fights off the cult.

After a close encounter with bubble head nurses, Rose finds Alessa, lying in a hospital bed unable to walk or speak and learns that Dark Alessa is the manifestation of the dark side of Alessa's soul. In a flashback, Rose discovers that Silent Hill has a history of ritual witch burnings, and the burning of Alessa went wrong, resulting in the fire that destroyed the town. Rose is told that Sharon is the manifestation of Alessa's remaining innocence, and was taken to the orphanage and adopted. Rose agrees to help Alessa gain her revenge to save her daughter.

Rose returns to the cult and finds Cybil has been burnt to death and Sharon is going suffer the same so rose tries to convince the cult that they are in denial of their fate but christabella stabs rose which releases Alessa and opens a portal to the otherworld, long streams of barbed wire flows out of the floor and proceed to kill the cult. Afterwards the souls of Alessa combine and they return home but appear to be still in the fog world as Rose and Christopher are in the same room but cannot see or hear each other.