Throughout its history, Silent Hill has taken on a lot of forms, including video games, comics and movies, but now it deserves a Netflix anime reboot. The franchise has long been considered one of the best in the survival horror genre, but its film adaptations have left something to be desired. A new adaptation could both breathe life back into the saga for long-time fans while drawing in a new audience from the more mainstream format a Netflix anime could provide. Silent Hill is series of survivor horror games that launched in 1999, all surrounding the eerie title town.
Over the eight games in the main series, the various protagonists all face their own personal horrors as they arrive in Silent Hill. Demons, monsters, cultists, terrifying hospitals, and ominous fog; Silent Hill has them all. In 2006, the first game was adapted into a live-action movie starring Radha Mitchell as Rose, a mother entering Silent Hill in hopes of finding a cure for her adopted daughter. Though the film received some criticism for its storytelling, it was a visually stunning adaptation. Its 2012 sequel, Silent Hill: Revelation, was ultimately disappointing all around, with plenty of continuity errors and bad special effects.
In recent years, several horror games have been received the Netflix anime treatment. Castlevania was adapted as a Netflix anime and received mostly positive notices from critics and audiences alike. Resident Evil, another titan in the survival horror genre, has been adapted into several animated films and has a Netflix anime show arriving in July 2021. Netflix has proven that horror games are the perfect candidates for quality animes, and no horror game deserves this treatment more than Silent Hill.
There is a lot to Silent Hill that makes the game series a perfect contender for an anime show. Most importantly, there is more than enough source material to keep any series going for multiple seasons. Silent Hill has eight main story games, four spinoffs, and two official crossovers, giving showrunners plenty to pull from. The lore of the franchise is extensive, featuring a range of protagonists and an incredible array of gory things that go bump in the night. The creatures of Silent Hill are just creative as they are grotesque, and could be thrillingly beautiful when brought to life with modern animation while paying tribute to their original format.
While the games follow different protagonists, the overarching storyline throughout the Silent Hill games is intricate and well suited for the long-term format of an anime, over the more condensed storytelling of a movie. An anime reboot would have the ability to explore every corner of this eerie town and its inhabitants. Silent Hill's residents the gamut from demons to cults, containing a wide enough range of horror to spook even the most seasoned horror veteran. While horror games may be a somewhat niche market, the narrative of Silent Hill is enthralling enough to draw in new audiences for the franchise through the more easily digestible format of an anime.
With the amount of mythology Silent Hill contains, a lot had to be condensed or left out to fit within a movie format. With so much narrative to fit into two films, a lot was cut and pasted to suit the needs of the movie story with little regard for its purpose in the games. The presence of the nurses or Pyramid Head in Silent Hill is the best example of this practice; in Silent Hill 2, these creatures are closely tied to James Sunderland, the protagonist. They serve as his personal tormentors, created by the guilt he feels surrounding his wife's death. James was never featured in the films so without him, their presence in Silent Hill makes little sense. An anime would give creators the time to explore James' story and do justice to the meaning behind these two iconic antagonists, instead of mere fan service.
James isn't the only piece of Silent Hill that was changed for the silver screen. The location of the town was moved from Maine to West Virginia. Both the main protagonist and antagonist were changed for the 2006 movie in a move that fell short of the meaning of the games. This rearranging of characters removes a lot of meaning be found in the original Silent Hill, separating some complex protagonists into either multiple, less interesting characters or removing them entirely. In an anime format, there would be more time to properly explore each strand of the franchise lore or present it the way it should be, instead of cherry-picking the parts that would look the coolest in a 90-minute frame.
With so much manipulation of Silent Hill's lore in the first film, the attempt to move back towards canon in Revelation only made things worse. The film is full of odd retcons and continuity errors from the original film as the filmmakers attempted to more closely mirror the plot of game Silent Hill 3. This was ultimately too little, too late, as the corrections contradict the first film's story. Alessa, the demonic antagonist of the films, has her motives become very foggy between Silent Hill and Revelations, and the lore surrounding her and Sharon's creation conflict from film to film. The special effects leave a lot to be desired, and the grown version of Sharon in Revelation hardly looks like her child counterpart, since the filmmakers attempted to return her design to something reminiscent of the video games.
Narratively, Revelation hardly feels like a proper sequel or a proper adaptation. Silent Hill deserves a second chance at an adaptation, and it definitely deserves better than Revelation as its final adaptation. That sequel may have left behind a bad taste that turns sour when the thought of another adaptation attempt comes to mind, but Silent Hill still has so much potential to explore, and a Netflix anime reboot would be the perfect chance at redemption for this iconic horror property.
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