Horror Film Countdown Day 21 – Movies Anxious Parents Should Avoid

Welcome to our countdown to the most anxiety-inducing horror films for parents!  Today is day twenty one!

Each day, we are covering the films I both love and hate because they’re awesome and they give me panic attacks now that I’m a mom.

Carrying on the same vein as our film from yesterday, it seems like a good day to dive into a title that crosses the barriers between dimensions.  It shows us a world between worlds and walks the bridge that binds film and gaming. Today we take a drive into my favorite of all haunted towns…

Disclaimer: Trigger warnings are a given when you talk about horror, but I’m going to say it anyway.  Many subjects covered by horror films are disturbing to parents in ways we can’t possibly understand and each is unique to the parent and his/her experiences. Tread carefully and know your limits.  If this begins to be too much, there’s no shame in closing the window.  Also, this post contains some spoilers throughout. 

11. Silent Hill

Before there was “The Upside Down”, before there was “The Further”, there was Silent Hill.  Originally a survival horror PlayStation game by Konami, the film adaptation appeared on the screen in 2006.  I admit here first off, after playing the games and being haunted (plagued is really more like it) by its continuously disturbing images for YEARS, the movie left something to be desired.  But now?

When we first see our Sharon, she is sleep walking in the woods, about to fall to her death while dreaming of a dark place with fire.  Once again, we have a child in actual, physical peril.  She is hanging in the balance between a dreamworld about to kill her, and her mother who is desperate to save her.  As a parent watching this now, I admit; This sort of scenario is one of the reasons I love having an alarm in my house and doors that are bolted from the top AND the bottom.  It’s the reason I lock all exits of my house and set the alarm if I take a shower or even vacuum the house.  Because you never know when they’re going to decide to just… walk out the door.

As we have seen so many times before, the child is suffering from an unknown malady which displays as night terrors, sleep walking and screaming in her sleep, a name; Silent Hill.  Instead of having her medicated or evaluated by actual doctors, her mother decides to take the child to Silent Hill, hoping to find answers.  Along the way, we see so many images that feel as though they walked right off the game and into reality.  We see the horrors of the game unfolding in a whole new and terrible way.  Why terrible?  Because we cannot control or manipulate the story, as we are now spectators instead of players.

When she awakes after crashing her car, the mother, Rose, finds Sharon missing and ashes raining from the sky.  As she wanders the foggy, empty streets of Silent Hill, the anxious pit in my stomach starts to shiver and drop.  It’s not because of the monsters.  It’s because of a lost child.  An empty city.  Air raid sirens and monsters everywhere.  A lost child.  Disappeared in a deadly town.  I’ve had nightmares like this.

When we were practically kids playing this game for the first time, did any of us think about what it must be like for this parent?  Did we consider the helplessness, the constant fear of what may be happening to his/her child? When I played this game ten years before I had children, it never really hit me that the entire point of this game was to reunite a missing daughter with her parent.  This creates a new sense of urgency. A new sense of fear and grief… a terrible, heart-twisting kind of loss making it that much more important to win.

A child being lost is one of a parent’s greatest fears.  It’s what makes the “stranger danger” conversation a daily occurrence.  It is what heightens a mother’s anxiety and anger when children wander too far ahead on walks or refuse to hold our hands in public or like to play “hide and seek” in department stores.

When I had both of my children and had to spend a few nights in the hospital, the horrifying images of this story came to mind and when that happened, I thought; how prepared am I for something terrible to happen right now?  Could I save my baby?  Could I survive?  Could I memorize the hospital map on the wall and carry my child while in pain and bleeding heavily through a dark hospital corridor?  Could I do it? Could I be a survivor if suddenly the nurses all became monsters and my only way out was through the roof?

That natural fear that instantly transfers from our own safety to that of our children is heightened because in this story, the child has wandered away in a town full of monsters and we have no idea how long it’s been between the time they got there and when her mother regained consciousness.  The lack of awareness of time is another issue.  The darkness in mid-day, the constant grey haze and ashes falling on everything disorients and confuses us as we try to wrap our minds around the question; just how long as she been there?  How long has Sharon been alone?  How far could she have gotten by now?  Is she even alive?

As a single girl who loved horror I had blissfully enjoyed seeing the game come to life, but I never really internalized the story or allowed it to affect me.

As a parent, this film hurts far more than it scares which, in turn, scares in an entirely different way. Walking into an empty restroom, down the corridor of a quiet school building, down a dark street at night, the way my hair stands up on end when I hear an air raid siren and the fear of what could come out of the fog are all images I associate with Silent Hill, but there is so much hurt and loss and children in pain, that it all overshadows the horrors now.

When you realize the reason for the darkness and the monsters in the first place is all because of how much one young girl had been tortured, isolated, experimented on and allowed to live in agony and fear, it all becomes much more sad than scary.  Her fear and anger became a tangible, living, breathing thing.  Her fury at what was done to her became a darkness capable of swallowing all goodness and light.  Sure, it may sound like a wild and impossible ghost story until you consider; how many brutal and disgusting things happen to children all the time?  How many chances does this miserable world create for some lost, tortured and powerful soul to create something inhuman, unholy… to seek revenge?  Is that possible?  Just because we’ve never seen it, doesn’t mean it’s never happened.  They say horrifying things can be felt in places where horrifying things happened.  Asylums, homes where abuse occurred, old hospitals, all carry the weight of the pain they have caused and hold the ghosts of that pain in the walls.

This is yet another film that shows us just what ignorance in parenting can do to a child.  It shows us how unsafe they must feel when no one listens.  When they feel isolated an alone, when they are told they are evil or bad or made to hurt for the ways they are different or for the sins of their parents, a child’s pain is the pain of innocence.

In this story, that pain becomes tangible.  A fictional tale that serves as a warning; judge not and love others, respect their differences and honor their truths.  Stand with the oppressed and not with the oppressor, or one day, it may be your turn.

 The story of Silent Hill has two major lessons:

1- Be nice and teach your kids to be nice.

2- Always be prepared for something terrible.  Keep flashlights, weapons, lanterns and candles.  Keep radios and sweaters and extra water just in case.

…but most of all, if you find yourself in a strange world outside the realm of your own, find a weapon, a flashlight, a radio and a map.  Pray you can carry your children to safety and do whatever it takes to make it home alive.