6 Terrifying Horror Movies To Watch If You Loved Silent Hill 2

Nothing but love to Christophe Gans—I still think the first Silent Hill flick is better than folks give it credit for—but four years after he took a good honest crack at bringing the cursed town to life, along came one of the GOATs, Martin Scorsese, and he delivered on all this series’ deeper promises without even intending to, and with a murderer’s row (pun unintended) of prestige actors involved. And, of course, they’re led by Scorsese’s current favorite, Leo DiCaprio.

Not, there’s no twitchy leg monsters or Pyramid Heads running around, but there is an unnerving misty island asylum, a mystery concerning a murdered wife, a subterranean netherworld where the truly insane taunt our so-called hero, a damaged nurse repentant for her actions, and one hell of a twist that Silent Hill 2 fans will genuinely appreciate. Basically, all the wonderfully fucked-up psychological torment, guilt, shame, and fear that a lot of Silent Hill media gets wrong, Scorsese gets right without breaking a sweat.

If you could somehow distill pure not-from-concentrate Divorced Guy Energy and pour it onto celluloid, you’d get something that vaguely resembled Possession. It takes a particularly fucked up, jilted mind to take a film about a marriage dissolving to where this goes, to say nothing of how disjointed and coldly malevolent it turns out.

James Sunderland got off light. His wife getting a wasting disease and becoming an angrier, more hostile version of herself is one thing. Sam Neill’s Mark is married to a woman (Isabelle Adjani) who leaves their young child neglected in an apartment for hours on end, has a random collection of dismembered body parts in a fridge in a separate apartment across town, had what can only be described as a full-body miscarriage in a subway station, and is apparently having the most incredible sex of her life with a murderous tentacle creature. Mark responds by getting involved in seething, violent arguments with her that end in murder and hate sex. Raise your game, Mary Sunderland.

This one’s mandatory viewing for cinephile Silent Hill fans, since this film’s DNA is all over the games, from the twitchy faces co-opted for the enemy designs, to James Sunderland literally wearing Jacob Singer’s outfit.

But the connection is less about the aesthetics than the tone. It’s a story existing in the surreal, incomprehensible middle-ground between life and death, where angels and demons both try to tell poor tortured Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) something he can’t or won’t understand through increasingly violent means. The drama seems to drag until it all falls into place later in the film, but even then, just like the best moments in the Silent Hill games, it’s a mood unlike anything else.

Oh, and in case anyone’s wondering, yes, there was a 2019 remake; yes, it was real bad.

If you aren’t ready for the nasty European flavor of psychsexual horror on film, don’t worry, David Cronenberg has you covered. Cronenberg’s also got Divorced Guy Energy going on, but his approach at least has a conversation about mental health and a therapist involved. Granted, therapy involves turning negative emotions and experiences into homicidal toddlers who murder whoever you talked about in the last session, but, y’know, still therapy.

As much as it is definitely A David Cronenberg Movie, there’s a lot of sadness and empathy for the factors that made Oliver Reed’s wife the way she is, but mostly a hell of a lot of anger. If you’re one of those people who thought the Maria ending was the way to go in Silent Hill 2, this should be your jam, because this basically has the same idea.

One of the things that a lot of old-schoolers—even the ones who generally liked the remake—complained about with Bloober Teams approach to Silent Hill 2 is that there’s a certain level of jankiness, graininess, and brokenness about the original game that’s just gone by necessity. There’s something that hits different about staring into a hallway, your light barely even penetrating the darkness, bouncing off of a vague abstraction of a lived-in apartment building or abandoned hospital, as opposed to a lovingly crafted, photoreal rendition of the same. Your mind just meets the abstraction halfway, and if it’s got any semblance of an imagination, it’ll craft terrors for you that Hollywood money can’t buy.

Skinamarink is 100 minutes of that feeling. A film taking its sweet time, stripping away every guard rail of typical horror media. The two children at its center wake up one night to find out their parents have disappeared. Then the doors. Then the windows. Then the lights. And then the shadows start moving. And then there are voices calling the kids upstairs. And mom’s upstairs. but something is breaking her bones. But you never actually see any of this in any discernible sense. Now, that does require a lot of buy-in from the viewer, because a mind that can’t really surrender its imagination like that will just see a 100-minute movie about two kids watching cartoons and yawn. But still. Turn out your lights, turn off your phone, watch this sucker in silence. You might be surprised where it takes you.

Is it an obvious choice? Sure. The original novella is the source of the whole conceit of Silent Hill being covered in fog (Half-Life also cribbed its premise from the original novella). It’s also one of the best Stephen King adaptations ever made, if not the best, and ‘tis very much the season for that. It’s also got a slew of great performances across the board, including the late, great Andre Brougher. For the strict gamers, Sam Witwer of Star Wars and Days Gone fame has a small but important role here. But more than anything, especially the more we watch real life splinter into weird pseudo-religious fiefdoms dealing with the threat of apocalypse with fear and bloodshed, it’s only become a more powerful and prescient piece of work since it was released. Mrs. Carmody is EVERYWHERE now.

But yes, on top of all of that, it’s also the only place in non-game media to get your fix of that special feeling SH2 gives you right from the start, of following something unidentifiable into the mist, and seeing it get swallowed up by unholy terror by the end. Do yourself a favor: Don’t stream it. Buy it on disc, roll with the black & white cut, it’s a very different ride.

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