aequitas989 said:

I saw silent hill tonight. I understood the plot, understood the revenge motive and why revenge had to take place, got all the faith jargon from the village idiots which was also hypocritical jargon. I get all of that. What I don't understand is what happened at the end? Did they die in the car crash at the beginning or did they get sucked into some twisted alternate world or dimension...if it's the latter I'm semi disappointed with the plot. I mean...you saw the cop's bike at the end. No way anyone survives that especially the way the guardrail was bent to pieces.

I understood the movie I just don't understand this alternate reality stuff. Maybe I'm dense...I donnow. I just need some clarity. Then again the way the radio freaked out in the car on their way in...ahhh forget it. I'm done trying to figure it out. Can anyone at least point me in the right direction?

Eshto said:

I completely reject the previous plot analysis. Here's mine, with spoilers of course:

[SPOILER] For one thing, the whole point of the movie was that there isn't such thing as God or the Devil - the religious nuts themeselves were the ones responsible for creating their own hell, not some outside, fictional character like Satan. Alessa was simply a being with extraordinary powers, and they knew it because people similar to her had been born there before, yet in their fear and fanaticism they had always burned those people up. Alessa was different because she actually lived through the ritual, and had time to grow more and more hateful until her dark side actually manifested as another person, the scary little girl, while her good side also was split off and became Sharon.

In other words, there was no such thing as good and evil, no silly mythological figures like Satan or Jesus or any of that garbage. As Rose says, there was never any apocalypse. They hurt an innocent, though powerful, person, and that's why they got trapped in a sort of "hell". Evil was entirely their own making, and if they had treated Alessa kindly, perhaps she would have gone on to use her powers to help people.

Because revenge consumes people, Alessa needed to project her good side out into the real world to protect it, and bring a mother back to rescue her from her own nightmare. They say twice that "mother is God in the eyes of the child", so Rose is very similar to God in Dante's Inferno, plucking the innocent out of pergatory and saving them from the fiery abyss.

But just because everything is symbolic of Christian mythology definitely does not mean there was actually a Devil or that any other part of that mythology literally existed in the movie. That would be pretty dumb, considering the whole point was to criticize religious fundamentalism, and point out that mythology is not literally true, that people create their own hells out of their own fears, and that people are responsible for evil, not some bogeyman.

As for the ending... I think the ending sucks. It is similar to the WORST ending in the game. Um yeah, hi Mr. Gans, the worst ending is a punishment for being a crappy player. Not sure if you knew that.

All I can think of is that Rose was able to rescue Alessa from her own hell, but the dark side (climbing the ladder) re-entered (pure) Sharon at the end. Thus the two cancel out and become a whole person again rather than polarized ideals - Sharon is now a mixture of good and evil, just like everyone else. For that reason, they are stuck in the limbo that represents purgatory. [/SPOILER]

Eshto said:

I completely reject the previous plot analysis. Here's mine, with spoilers of course:

[SPOILER] For one thing, the whole point of the movie was that there isn't such thing as God or the Devil - the religious nuts themeselves were the ones responsible for creating their own hell, not some outside, fictional character like Satan. Alessa was simply a being with extraordinary powers, and they knew it because people similar to her had been born there before, yet in their fear and fanaticism they had always burned those people up. Alessa was different because she actually lived through the ritual, and had time to grow more and more hateful until her dark side actually manifested as another person, the scary little girl, while her good side also was split off and became Sharon.

In other words, there was no such thing as good and evil, no silly mythological figures like Satan or Jesus or any of that garbage. As Rose says, there was never any apocalypse. They hurt an innocent, though powerful, person, and that's why they got trapped in a sort of "hell". Evil was entirely their own making, and if they had treated Alessa kindly, perhaps she would have gone on to use her powers to help people.

Because revenge consumes people, Alessa needed to project her good side out into the real world to protect it, and bring a mother back to rescue her from her own nightmare. They say twice that "mother is God in the eyes of the child", so Rose is very similar to God in Dante's Inferno, plucking the innocent out of pergatory and saving them from the fiery abyss.

But just because everything is symbolic of Christian mythology definitely does not mean there was actually a Devil or that any other part of that mythology literally existed in the movie. That would be pretty dumb, considering the whole point was to criticize religious fundamentalism, and point out that mythology is not literally true, that people create their own hells out of their own fears, and that people are responsible for evil, not some bogeyman.

As for the ending... I think the ending sucks. It is similar to the WORST ending in the game. Um yeah, hi Mr. Gans, the worst ending is a punishment for being a crappy player. Not sure if you knew that.

All I can think of is that Rose was able to rescue Alessa from her own hell, but the dark side (climbing the ladder) re-entered (pure) Sharon at the end. Thus the two cancel out and become a whole person again rather than polarized ideals - Sharon is now a mixture of good and evil, just like everyone else. For that reason, they are stuck in the limbo that represents purgatory. [/SPOILER]