Silent Hill instead highlights a real life problem faced by West Virginia and many other parts of Appalachia without relying on stereotypical representations of Appalachian people. Where stereotypes have depicted uncivilized godless violence (Deliverance is a prime example), the local residents of Silent Hill are middle class fundamentalists, each of them devoted members of a cult called the Brethren.
This subversive depiction is further expounded on in flashbacks to before the disaster that made the town uninhabitable and created the alternate hellish reality. The residents of Silent Hill are economically comfortable, with lofty ideals of social compliance and snuffing out perceived abnormal behavior in cruel ways more in line with a critique of suburbia than Appalachia. This representation is a major departure from the traditional reliance on the imagery of scattered, violent hillbillies that has dominated depictions of Appalachian antagonists across mediums.
Although there is still a depiction of a violent populace, it’s a violence not rooted in the degradation of Appalachians as ignorant and uncultured but rather a more translatable depiction of conformity that could happen anywhere. The use of West Virginia as the setting highlights the real contemporary issues of environmental destruction caused by the extractive industries that have plagued the region for centuries.
The disaster that ultimately caused the supernatural creation of the Silent Hill dimension deepens the thematic strata of Silent Hill. Alessa (also played by Jodelle Ferland), a young girl from the days before the dimension opened, was ridiculed and villainized by the pious residents of Silent Hill for being born out of wedlock. Dahlia (Deborah Kara Unger), Alessa’s mother, allows Christabella (Alice Krige), the high priestess of the Brethren, to try a “purifying” ritual on Alessa after she is raped by her school’s janitor. Christabella and her followers then attempt to burn Alessa alive in an immolation ritual which is stopped by Dahlia and police officer Thomas Gucci (Kim Coates), but only after Alessa is horribly disfigured by the fire (this fire is ultimately what causes the coal-seam disaster that forced residents to abandon the town).
Torn apart by her hatred, Alessa creates the constantly-shifting nightmarish dark Silent Hill dimension, trapping a guilt-ridden Dahlia and members of the Brethren in her ashen, monster-laden hellscape. Alessa is thus split between Dark Alessa, a demonic entity feeding off her hatred, and Sharon, her innocence incarnate.
It is not a stretch to describe Silent Hill as an ecofeminist piece of media. Ecofeminism is defined as “both political activism and intellectual critique” by ScienceDirect. It is a framework that argues the harm done to women and the harm done to the environment mirror each other and manifest in a number of parallel ways societally and politically.
