“She’s such a really moving example of how people can get lost in the system,” Judith Light, who plays Dorry, tells Den of Geek. “So much of her life has been sacrificed to the system, and she had no control over it. Her character is so beautifully crafted, and you get to really see all of those things that make her who she is, and the abuse that she’s suffered. What does it mean to have a husband who cannot put up with your mood swings or your creative artistry and who puts you in an institution and leaves you there and never comes back to get you, and suddenly 30 years pass? The sorrow of that is so deep for me.”
At its heart, The Devil in Silver is a story that’s as much about human monsters as it is supernatural creatures. The residents of New Hyde are unwilling cogs in a devastating system, trapped in, as star Dan Stevens himself put it, “a waiting room without a door,” and their experiences reflect the very real concerns about the modern mental health industry that are reflected in author Victor LaValle’s novel.
“I didn’t know a lot about Victor’s work. I knew that he was a bestselling New York Times novelist, but I didn’t know a lot about [his writing]. When I started to read the novel, what I found compelling was the way he talked about Dorry and who she was in the dynamics of the system,” Light says. “I think it’s a really great way to talk about the context of our world right now, about mental health and what the challenges there are. The script was incredible — I read two lines and called my agents and my managers and said ‘I’m in’.”
For Light, The Devil in Silver isn’t a horror story in the traditional sense, though it has plenty of frightening elements. They’re just based firmly in a world we can see and understand.
“This is a psychological thriller. I don’t call it horror so much — I know that there are huge horror fans out there, and I get it. But it is horrifying. That’s a perfect way to describe it, to describe what happens [in New Hyde]. Where is our compassion for each other? Where is our empathy for each other? What does it mean to live your life for so many years in a mental facility? What does it mean to have mental challenges and to have no one there to help you and guide you? That’s what terrifies us. That’s what keeps us up at night. And there’s a tipping point for every one of these characters, who are so frustrated with their lives, and just put away for who knows how long.”
In the wake of Coffee’s death, the hospital administration decides that New Hyde will be shuttered permanently, its patients shifted to different locations. For its residents, this is simply another in a long line of failures whose adverse effects they must live with, whether they like it or not. But it’s also a very real threat — to Dorry, Pepper, and the rest of the patients, it means releasing a dark entity they know to be both real and extremely dangerous.
