Silent Hill Ending Explained: No One Leaves Silent Hill
Based on the successful video game franchise of the same name, "Silent Hill" is a psychological nightmare film about a woman named Rose (Radha Mitchell) who travels to the fictional town of Silent Hill, West Virginia, to investigate the past of her adopted daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland), who she believes grew up in the mysterious town that has long since been cut off from the rest of the world after a devastating fire. Rose and Sharon are separated after a car accident, leaving Rose to explore the horrific town on her own to find her daughter, in a reimagined version of the original game which centers on a man looking in the town for his lost daughter.
Rose is joined by a skeptical police officer named Cybil (Laurie Holden) who is convinced Rose is up to no good, but once the duo both experience the unsettling and unexplainable monsters of Silent Hill, Cybil joins Rose on her quest to find Sharon, figure out the truth of Silent Hill, and get the hell out of there before they're killed.
"Silent Hill" the game was visually inspired by the film "Jacob's Ladder," which influenced both the game and the subsequent film's trademark terrors. Rose and Cybil's journey through Silent Hill is not easy, with new atrocities awaiting them around every corner and the cult inhabitants of the town also trying to kill them. Cybil unfortunately doesn't make it out alive, but after Rose gets to the bottom of Sharon's story, she packs up her daughter and makes it home alive ... or do they?
What you need to remember about the plot of Silent Hill
The town of Silent Hill appears to exist in dual dimensions. Rose discovers a small girl named Alessa Gillespie was brutally burned by the cult of Silent Hill for the crime of being born out of wedlock. Her pain and rage made her vulnerable enough to allow the devil to take possession of her in exchange for granting her revenge against the townspeople, fracturing her being into three separate entities: Alessa (an adult woman, burned alive as a child, confined to a hospital gurney), Dark Alessa (the corrupted portion of Alessa) who frequently appears as a narrator to Rose, and Sharon Da Silva (the innocent side of Alessa), Rose's adopted daughter.
With the fracturing of Alessa came the fracturing of the town of Silent Hill into multiple dimensions. When Rose and Sharon drove into the town of Silent Hill, they entered the ashy and depressive-looking dimension, transporting out of the dimension they'd been living in. While Rose is on the search for Sharon, the world looks blue, foggy, and bleak. When Rose doesn't return, her husband Chris (Sean Bean) goes looking for her, but as he passes into the city limits without Sharon, the area leading to Silent Hill looks like the normal dimension, albeit rainy, but still full of warm colors. He sees the town as it exists to the rest of the world, while Rose experiences the grotesque dimension ravaged by Alessa's rage.
What happened at the end of Silent Hill?
Toward the end of the film, the devil enters Rose to gain access to the cult's sanctuary and fulfills his promise to avenge Alessa. The cult has found Sharon and Cybil and intends to "cleanse" them both with fire. Cybil unfortunately dies, but before the cult has the chance to burn Sharon, cult leader Christabella stabs Rose and inspires some of the cult members to lose their faith. This moment of vulnerability allows the devil to leave her body and terrorize everyone inside the sanctuary. Barbed wires extend from Alessa's hospital bed, shredding the townspeople in gruesome ways. Rose holds Sharon to her body, telling her not to look at the carnage, but before she closes her eyes, Dark Alessa appears to Sharon and she passes out.
When the revenge plot has been fulfilled, Rose leaves the sanctuary with Sharon, who locates their vehicle and drives home. Unfortunately, when they leave Silent Hill, the world around them is still bleak, blue, and hazy. They are still trapped in the alternate dimension, even as they re-enter their home. Chris can sense and smell Rose and Sharon, but he cannot see, hear, or touch them. They are sharing the same space but in two different dimensions.
What the end of Silent Hill means
During Chris' visit to Silent Hill, he is told by Officer Thomas Gucci that after the great fire that destroyed the town, none of the bodies of the citizens were found. It was assumed that they were all a part of the ash, but the reality is that their bodies are in the timeless dimension created by Alessa. This allows both dimensions to exist simultaneously without either side knowing the truth. The fanatic cult of Silent Hill believes that their dimension is the one they were in before Alessa's rage, which justifies their fanatical beliefs. Meanwhile, the "real world" sees what happened in Silent Hill as an unfortunate event, and with the city blockaded off, there's no need for further exploration.
When Alessa was split into three parts, only the good — the part that became Sharon — was able to leave the hellish version of Silent Hill, with Alessa and Dark Alessa still confined to the gray dimension. When Sharon saw Dark Alessa during the carnage in the chapel, this was the contact Dark Alessa needed to become one with Sharon. This side of her has been reunited with her good side, inhabiting one body. Alessa now has a mother with Rose and is unwilling to give that up. At the same time, she's bound to the dimension her rage created. She can leave the city limits of Silent Hill, but not the gray dimension. Instead, the dimension has expanded.
What the end of Silent Hill could mean for the franchise
Six years after "Silent Hill," the sequel film "Silent Hill Revelation" debuted featuring the return of Dahlia Gillespie, Rose Da Silva, and Christopher Da Silva, who has now taken on the identity of Harry Mason. Rose managed to free Sharon/Dark Alessa using a talisman but is still stuck in the gray dimension herself. Chris as Harry has given Sharon the new name of Heather Mason, and the two are constantly on the run from the dark forces of Silent Hill, including the Order cult. But Heather is under the impression their constant running is because her father killed a man in self-defense, and thinks her mother died in a car crash. But on her 18th birthday, she learns the truth and heads back into Silent Hill.
"Silent Hill Revelation" was not as well received as the original film, boasting a whopping 8% on Rotten Tomatoes. The film has also not been reevaluated in the same positive light as "Silent Hill," which despite its initially poor critical performance, is now understood as one of the better film adaptations of a video game. "Revelation" was lambasted for its lack of scares, shoddy digital effects, and confusing character developments. However, the film marks the feature film debut of actor Kit Harington, who would go on to play Jon Snow on HBO's "Game of Thrones."
What does the future of Silent Hill look like?
In the fall of 2022, Konami (the company that makes "Silent Hill" video games) announced that director Christophe Gans would be returning to the franchise after 15 years with a new "Silent Hill" movie. Titled "Return to Silent Hill," the film is slated to be "the catalyst for the revival of new 'Silent Hill' games." Gans has promised that fan-favorite characters like Pyramid Head would reappear and said the film would be about a young man returning to Silent Hill, a place where "he has known a great love" but that once he returned to those hallowed grounds, "what he's going to find is a pure nightmare."
The film and subsequent games will be inspired by the myth of Orpheus and will use the universe of "Silent Hill" to examine how far one man is willing to go into the depths of Hell for the one he loves most. In this case, "Hell" doubling for a small town covered in foggy ash where twisted humanoid creatures want to kill you. If this sounds like the plot of the "Silent Hill 2" video game, that's because it is.
"Silent Hill 2" was recently given an updated remake, so the ball for "Return to Silent Hill" is already rolling, even though the film is still in very early pre-production.