So, Return to Silent Hill has been out for a couple of days now and the reviews are in. Suffice to say, most people think it’s like what happened to Maria when Pyramid Head got to her at the end of the elevator corridor in the Silent Hill 2 video game: it got butchered. As of this writing, the Rotten Tomatoes score for Return to Silent Hill is at a staggering 15% Rotten from critics and general audiences giving it a mere 30% score. Silver lining, though? Sometimes, critics and audiences can agree!

Maybe I’m being contrarian here but, honestly, I liked Return to Silent Hill. Sure, I said in my review that I liked it in a B-movie kind of way, which is kind of sad because the movie allegedly had a $23 million dollar budget. Not exactly in B-movie territory but that’s how I thought of it anyways. Still, I’ve seen a lot of reviews and I agree with a lot of their points. In fact, I even said some of those same points in my review. So, why did I walk away from my screening of Return to Silent Hill with a more positive viewpoint than what they had? I guess I have to explain my way of thinking. And, in a way, sort of try to defend Return to Silent Hill and my interpretation of Christophe Gans‘ “vision” of the film

Now, in order to do this, I will have to talk about some plot points from the movie. As such, this will be more of a SPOILER FILLED discussion. Just fair warning here.

A little backstory on how Return to Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2 (the video game) are connected before we get to the discussion. Return to Silent Hill lifts the general premise from Silent Hill 2. James Sunderland, the main character, receives a letter from his long lost love, Mary. The letter is a request for James to come back to the town of Silent Hill to meet with her. When James does arrive at the town, he doesn’t return to the peaceful tourist town he once visited. What he finds is a town that is in severe disrepair. Worse still, it seems to be infested with monsters. Still, James soldiers on to find Mary.

First of all, I think one of the biggest hurdles Return to Silent Hill has to jump over is the fact it’s not a one-to-one translation of Silent Hill 2. As most fans consider Silent Hill 2 to be the best game in the franchise, and for good reason, there was bound to be a contingent of them who would get upset that Christophe Gans made drastic changes to the story. He changed things like James and Mary living in Silent Hill for a while and giving Mary a past with the same cult found in his first Silent Hill movie. That’s disconcerting enough. But the biggest change has to be combining Mary with, not only Maria, but with Angela and Laura. In the game, the last two were different people but, in Return to Silent Hill, they were different aspects of Mary’s past. This was also something I initially didn’t like but, when I saw the ending, I kind of understood what Christophe Gans was trying to do. More on that later.

Another issue most critics have with Return to Silent Hill is the editing. The film keeps on bouncing back from what seems like a flashback to present time without any warning and that did get really confusing. I totally get that. But what if I told you it’s supposed to be confusing? I kind of think this was an intentional choice to make things extremely convoluted and seems mixed up. Why? Well, the answer is actually shown in the movie: James Sunderland is insane! Practically everything we see in the movie, from his drive to Silent Hill, meeting Angela and Laura, encountering Mary and more are all happening in James’ head. So, if every thing we’re seeing is all in James’ sick imagination, how can we really tell if anything really happened?

A good example of why I think this is what’s happening is the start and the end of the movie as both of them are pretty much the same scene but with different outcomes. In the opening, James is driving recklessly down a mountain path and accidentally wrecks Mary’s suitcase. She was leaving town but James offers to drive her back into Silent Hill, which she accepts. In the ending, the same thing happens but, instead of going back to town, James and Mary drive away from Silent Hill.

Now, the opening didn’t make sense to me later on as it’s revealed Mary was leaving town to get away from a cult that has been abusing her since she was a child. If this was true and she was trying to escape, why the heck wouldn’t she panically board the bus out of town, destroyed suitcase and all? Well, what if I told you this isn’t exactly what happened but this is James’ guilt riddled mind remembering things incorrectly? What if I told you James just made up the cult in his mind to give himself a legitimate excuse for leaving Mary? In essence, what if all the flashbacks were also just in James’ imagination and he’s just trying to make excuses for himself?

I also noticed that some critics are complaining how the ending of Return to Silent Hill is trying to give the viewers a happy ending. Once again, it’s not because all of that is happening in James’ head. He didn’t time travel back to when they first met! He’s just trying to imagine what it would be like if they left the town. Maybe they would have a better life. Maybe Mary wouldn’t have gotten sick. It’s just a “what if?” scenario and I bet James is actually just in that hospital room staring out the window. Heck, I’m pretty sure of it because he thanks the doctor for all of her help, signaling that he doesn’t want any more help and would rather live back in the desolate world where he might find Mary. It’s not exactly a happy ending because, in the real world, James is probably in a comatose state as he doesn’t want to snap back to reality anymore.

This also sets up Christophe Gans’ other major change that I mentioned. This would be making Mary, Angela and Laura the same person but in different stages of their life. I understand why fans wouldn’t like this. Angela is such a well-written character on how abuse eats away at a person. Laura is supposed to be “the innocent” and, as such, she never sees monsters as she doesn’t have any guilt for the mystical town of Silent Hill to reflect back on her. While I also didn’t like this change, I can sort of see why Christophe Gans did from a storytelling aspect.

When James first meets Angela in Return to Silent Hill, before he leaves her, she asks James that, if he can’t find Mary, he can instead leave with her. This hints of Mary/Angela’s desire to be rescued by James from her abusive father. While I did say a lot of stuff we see happen is mostly in James’ head, I do think the abuse happened but James just suspected it and Mary never opened up about it. This is also probably another reason why James dreamed up the cult. The guilt of never really finding out while Mary was alive just ate him up. Or maybe James figured it out and left Mary out of confused spite.

But what about Laura? Why does Laura constantly run away from James then? Well, at this point in her life, she doesn’t really need rescuing! At the very least, she might not even realize she’s being abused yet. This is probably why James wants so desperately want to rescue Laura. Not because she’s a kid but because this is the “innocent” version of Mary he wants to protect. One that hasn’t been hurt by abuse yet.

I also have to talk about two other characters: Eddie and the hobo. How do they fit into James’ delusion? Well, I actually believe Eddie and the hobo are actually James. They’re manifestations of how James sees himself. They both have the same goal of wanting to be left alone but in different ways. The hobo just isolates himself from all outside contact to protect himself. Eddie is a little devious and shows off James lying to himself. I say that because Eddie claims to love living alone and, when they encounter Laura, Eddie tries to prevent James from bringing her along. Eddie also lashes out at James when he’s called an asshole. This leads to Eddie kicking and beating James, essentially this has James beating himself up for not saving Mary/Laura when he had the chance.

All of this leads me to why I did enjoy Return to Silent Hill and it actually correlates to why a lot of people love Silent Hill 2: symbolism. Most gamers understand a lot of the symbolism in Silent Hill 2. Things like Pyramid Head being a brutal executioner since James killed mercy killed Mary and Abstract Daddy being the monster in Angela’s imagination standing in for her abusive father and the horrible things he did to her.

Well, Return to Silent Hill also has a lot of symbolism but, as I explained, the symbolism isn’t just with the monsters but with the characters as, like I said, all of it is in James’ guilt riddled mind. Granted, I might be reading too much into this. I can’t say for sure if everything I said was in Christophe Gans’ mind when he wrote and directed Return to Silent Hill. I also can’t say if I overlooked some things and I’m missing the point entirely. But when I did view the movie through this lens of symbolism, this made me enjoy Return to Silent Hill much more than most critics and regular viewers. So, I might be totally off-base but, like James Sunderland from the movie, just leave me be with my delusions. I’m much happier with this way of looking at it.

Am I totally wrong about seeing any symbolism in Return to Silent Hill? Let me know in the comments section below!