Matt Powers
Blog #3
Option #1
Terrifyingly
Intriguing Environments
No matter how many times I watch it
on thing remains true, Silent Hill will never get old. This movie is full of
gothic tropes, and in many ways relates to our readings. While it relates to all
of them in someway, the one that stands out the most is “The Lonesome Place”.
While both stories use a variety of the same tropes to create suspension and
better tell the story; I think the way their most similar is in their reliance
on a sense of mystery and dread when describing the environments in the story
and movie.
From scene to scene the movie
Silent Hill draws in its audience and holds their curiosity through suspenseful
environments and dramatic moments. While there are many examples of this, one stands
out over the others. Early on in the movie Rosa awakes from a car crash on the
outside of Silent Hill. As she comes to, she looks behind her in the back seat
and realizes that her daughter Sharon has run off. She then looks forward and
sees a thick black cloud of what appears to be fog. Directly in front of her there is an old highway
sign that reads “Silent Hill” and as she gets out of the car we realize that
there is no fog, but in fact ash is blowing across the highway and falling from
the sky. Rosa sees a little girl a few yards ahead of her and mistakes her for
Sharon. As the girl takes off Rosa chases into the ashy fog after her. This scene occurs rather early in the film
and is constructed to both, foreshadow facts to come as well as captivate the
viewer leaving him in a suspenseful moment as he wonders what will happen in
Silent Hill.
In the “Lonesome Place” the author,
August Derleth, relies just as heavily on the description and suspenseful
nature of the environment surrounding the main characters. Early in the novel
this becomes evident as the main character describes the lonesome place to the
reader, he says “ with no house nearby and up beyond it the tall, dark grain
elevator, gaunt and forbidding, the lonesome place of trees and shed and
lumber, in which anything might be lurking, anything at all” (pg192). In this quote we are painted a picture of the
Lonesome Place that frightens the boys. When reading this passage I picture an
area off in the distance, with a grain elevator and the infinite possibilities
as to what type of creature lurks there. Reading this I see a similarity in the
goals of both Silent Hill and “The Lonesome Place”; both describe the
environment’s enough to evoke curiosity and suspense form the audience. They both
take the main characters and create an atmosphere in which the reader is unsure
of what’s about to come, but he is too intrigued to look away. Whether its Rosa running into the unknown
through the fog of ash or the boys looking at the grain elevator that houses a
foul beast both use a sense of mystery and dread to terrify there audience.
Works Citied:
·
Derleth August. The Lonesome Place. American
Gothic Tales. New York: Plume, 1996. N. pag. Print.
·
http://www.ign.com/articles/2006/04/21/silent-hill-2
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