First of all, this is a very recommended horror film, worth a look, friends who haven't seen it can download it, especially the first one, the second part feels too faithful to the original and is a little awkward and unreasonable.

Movie plot

The story begins with the choice of an ordinary mother, Rose. Rose's beloved daughter, Sharon, suffers from an unexplained illness and often sleepwalks and mentions returning to a "home" called Silent Hill. Out of a woman's maternal instinct, she doesn't want to accept such a cruel reality. In order to relieve her daughter's illness, she decided to take her daughter to Silent Hill with the intention of eradicating the disease completely, despite her husband's opposition. So she runs away from home with Sharon and steps into a shadowy town that has no popularity, Silent Hill, where the story takes place.

When the mother and daughter stopped to refuel at the roadside gas station and asked the gas station attendant for directions to Silent Hill, Cybil, a policewoman who happened to pass by on patrol, judged to be abnormal, and then followed the mother and daughter until Silent Hill. Soon after the mother and daughter set foot in the land, Sharon suddenly disappeared, and the misty town swallowed up the little figure, Rose followed a daughter-like vision through the town to search for her beloved daughter, but encountered something she didn't expect, she encountered a lot of monsters that should only appear in imaginary novels, which alarmed her, and she feared that her daughter would be harmed by them. Although Rose did not find her daughter, in the process of finding her, she learned about the history of Silent Hill and discovered that Sharon was just a hostage in the game, and that there was a shocking conspiracy behind it. In order to find the whereabouts of her daughter, under the guidance of the "survivors", Rose went to the demon's lair, and in order to achieve Alessa's revenge, she told Rose what happened in Silent Hill 30 years ago and made a condition: "If you want your daughter to return to you, you must let the dark forces take over the town and kill all humans who want to destroy these monsters." Out of strong maternal love, Rose agreed to her request. In the end, Rose rescued her daughter, but at great cost......

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The content is selected from the well-known film review "Take Me Back to Silent Hill", excerpts, with deletions.

This article has been widely reprinted on the Internet, including Baidu Encyclopedia, Baidu Know, Baidu Tieba, Silent Ridge Chinese Network, Tianya Forum, SonicBBS, Douban.com, Time.com, various forums and personal homepages, etc., all reprinted from my original blog.

Silent Hill's Worldview: "Triadism", "Dualism" and "Dualism"

Anyone who has seen "Silent Hill" should probably feel that there is more than one space in the movie. As for the question of how many spaces there are in Silent Hill, there are generally three views: "dead theory", "dualism" and "triadism". Viewers who hold the "dead" theory (i.e., the belief that Silent Hill is the "underworld" and that the person who enters Silent Hill has actually died in the opening car accident) may be "not understood" by the movie or misled by a mistranslated subtitle of the line "You're all dead" (which should actually be "You're all cursed"). "Triadism" is a widely supported view, and there are even articles that concisely and vividly summarize the three worlds of Silent Hill with the words "yellow and clear", "gray" and "black". But I think that although there are three worlds in Silent Hill, the term "triadism" is inaccurate.

First of all, it is possible to distinguish what the three worlds of Silent Hill are:

1. The real world: It is the real world, in this world, Silent Hill is an abandoned town, that is, the world of "Huang Chengcheng", which is due to the fact that most of the real daytime in the film adopts a warm and sunny tone.

2. "Table world": that is, the "gray" world, that is, the world in which the heroine Rose wakes up in a car accident and finds herself in, as if it is winter, is actually a world created by the demonized Alessa with evil power, trapping all the people who "deserve it" inside.

3. "Inner World": That is, the "dark" world, that is, the world that is transformed from time to time after the alarm sounds, a bloody, dirty scene and all kinds of monsters, which is actually a reflection of Alesha's inner pain and depression and controlled by her evil power and hatred. Both the surface world and the inner world are concepts borrowed from the Silent Hill game.

There seems to be no problem with the existence of three worlds. But after analysis, we will find that if we look at it from the perspective of "dimensional opposites", then there are only two opposing spaces. Before that, let's look at one concept: dualism.

"Dualism" as a kind of thought in philosophy usually refers to the recognition of two fundamental, indivisible and different elements, which conflict or complement each other, and is divided into "dualism in the epistemological sense" that applies these two basic elements to epistemic activities and "dualism in the metaphysical sense" that is used to explain all objective phenomena in a broad sense. "Dualism" itself is also a product of the self-negating development law of Western history and culture since modern times, and it is a negation of medieval Christian spiritualism.

The world of Silent Hill itself has a duality between the outer and inner worlds, and in this way, with the addition of the real world, it seems that the "triadism" is established. However, the opposing external and internal worlds cannot be in opposition to the real world at the same time. Because the world of Silent Hill is either the surface world or the inner world, and the two cannot coexist with each other, it leads to the coexistence and opposition of the real world and the surface world, or the coexistence and opposition of the real world and the inner world, and there is no possibility that the real world, the surface world, and the inner world exist and oppose each other. It should be noted that the church in the inner world is only inaccessible to monsters due to beliefs, and it does not have the characteristics of the surface world, so it is not the surface world, it can only be regarded as a special place in the inner world; And the basement of the hospital where Alesa is located is just a special place in the surface world, and just because there are monsters and black paint in the basement of the hospital, it cannot be considered that it is the inner world, because there are monsters in the surface world, and the basement is naturally dark without light; The creation and formation of the world in the game "Silent Hill" is different from that in the movie, and it cannot be used as a basis to explain the movie "Silent Hill". So it can be concluded that there are indeed three worlds in Silent Hill, but from the perspective of "opposites", there are only binary opposites. Therefore, the worldview in Silent Hill is a "dualism" that there are three worlds, or it can be said that there are only two worlds in reality: the real world and the changing world of Silent Hill. As a Western horror film with religious themes, "Silent Hill" does not break away from the law of dualism.

In fact, this duality in the film has been hinted at at the beginning of the film, that is, the scene where Rose's daughter Sharon (Sharon) almost falls off a cliff while sleepwalking, which constitutes the opposition between up and down, the opposition between the water and the underwater, the opposition between the real world and the illusory world, the opposition between the evil side of the good Sharen and Alesha, and even the opposition between water and fire that turns out to be in the underwater world but exists in the fantasy world. I admit to being scared when the shot of Alesha's evil side falling from the cliff at high speed appeared, and although it is said that the footage of this stay only lasted 0.7 seconds, the terrifying smile was really shocking, and it was hard to imagine that the image of the lovely Alessa was played by the same little actor as this terrifying evil Alesha! I really have to admire her acting skills!

Three Alesha:

In the film, on the role of the "little girl", some people may not be able to sort out the relationship between Alesha, Sharen and other characters, referring to some recognized conclusions, we can clearly have three different forms of "Alesha".

1. Alesha: The little girl who was burned at the stake more than thirty years ago, and the "ultimate monster" who was later slaughtered in the church, it is clear from her later body that she has been growing.

2. Alesha's evil side: that is, the figure who caused Rose's car accident, and later guided Rose to track down, solve mysteries, disappear in the form of burning and merge with Rose in the basement of the hospital, and the little girl appeared in the blue-purple school uniform that Alessa wore back then. She is the embodiment of the evil power that Alessa has created in the hospital with extreme fear and hatred after she has been severely burned, and she has given Alessa the power of demons.

3. Alesha's good side: that is, Rose's daughter Sharen, who was born by Alessa in the form of childbirth, and was sent by Alessa's evil side to a real-world monastery, and later adopted by Rose (from which it is known that Alesha's evil side has the ability to travel freely between the three worlds). Some people believe that Saren is Alesha's biological daughter based on the plot that Alessa has been raped/raped, which is simply a lack of basic life logic: it is impossible for Alesa to have fertility at that time, and in addition, with Sharen's age, it is impossible for Alesa to be pregnant for twenty years and have another child, and Saren repeatedly sleepwalks and wants to return to Silent Hill because she is called by a mysterious power to go back to "union" with Alesha's evil side.

The humanistic connotation in "Silent Hill".

A large part of the humanistic connotation of "Silent Hill" comes from the existence of religious elements. At the beginning of the film, when Rose is frantically looking for Sharin and finally hugs her husband who arrives, a lighted cross appears in the background, why isn't there something else coming out of there? Like a Ferris wheel with lights on? Buildings with lights on? Because this is originally a hint to tell you about the religious themes involved in this film. The camera stops on a sign that appears on the way to Silent Hill where Rose takes Saren, and the content on it is, "Do, you, not, know, that, we, will, judge, angels?" Do・you・not・konw・that・the・saints・will・judge・the・world？ (Do you not know that we are going to judge the angels?) Do you not know that the believers will judge the world? This is a foreshadowing of their prospect of going to Silent Hill, being "judged" by a group of self-religious paranoia, but in the end it is implying that the end of the whole film is the judgment of the devil on the believers, and those who think they are righteous for evil will eventually be abandoned by God - don't tell me you didn't notice that the sign looks like a book, don't tell me you didn't think it was the Bible when you saw the book! There is also a shot of Rose at Silent Hill School, with the words on the door frame: "The, foes, of, the, righteous, will, be, condemned." This is the text of the Bible Psalms: "Evil, will, slay, the, wicked; the, foes, of, the, righteous, will, be, condemned; Whoever hates the righteous will be condemned.) Needless to say, the fate of those who thought they believed in God, condemned and judged, had once again been informed to the audience in advance.

From the movie, we know that Silent Hill is a town abandoned in November 1974 due to a fire in an underground coal mine, and the underground boilers and ore veins are still burning with fires, so deadly pollutants float in the air of Silent Hill. This is not evident in the real world. In the watch world, it appears to be "snow" that is constantly falling, and Rose later discovers that it is actually falling "soot". And how does the biblical book of St. John's Revelation describe "hell"? "It is a perpetual lake of fire, its air from the coal of the scourge, and its light from the flickering flames. The night was dark, and poisonous snakes were rampant in the premises of the cursed. Their hope is despair. Ah, eternal death! Lifeless! Ah, endless pain! Jesus' depiction of hell in the Bible and Gospels also includes the words "fire is unquenchable."

The crumbling walls, rusty pipes and doors, iron staircases, turning fans, clangling metal crashes and smoke or steam that come out of nowhere, seem to exist only in the oppressive environment of iron black and fiery red, which is a reproduction of the industrial age of big machine production! This is all a post-industrial artistic style of the film's rendering of the declining industrial age with a sad image of the end times.

For Silent Hill, the post-industrial art style is only its appearance, and the religious metaphors of the Bible are its substance. After the world was opened, the church's prayers were to prevent the "Last Judgment" in the Bible, or the "Apocalypse" in the movies.