The Cryptic Caverns

Basically the rest of the movie feels weirdly confused. The plot gets mushy and unravels the further along you go. There is surrealism, and there is whatever the fuck this is. It's not confusing in a fun horror way, it's just confusing. So I'm not gonna go through the whole thing beat by beat, because the beats sound like they're being played by a toddler who just got their first practice drumkit.

This isn't just an adaptation of Silent Hill 2, it is a sequel to Silent Hill (2006), the movie directed by Cristophe Gans, who returned to direct this movie. Not only is it giving us the story of James and Mary, it's trying to give us that story while also tying it to the events of the previous films. The video game is completely disconnected to the other video games, but it makes sense for the movie to try to be connected to the other movies. I actually really liked that and was excited to see where it led.

We first meet Mary as Mary Crane, the daughter of Jacob Crane (who as far as I can tell was invented for this movie and is not even in some obscure Silent Hill media like the pachinko machine or mobile game). Jacob Crane is the late leader of The Order, the cult that secretly runs Silent Hill. He passed away before James ever met Mary, so we never meet him in the flesh (we do get to see his spooky ass appear in a death mask, though). Mary being the heir apparent to The Order isn't a terrible idea for this movie. It adds some intrigue to her character while tying this movie to the events of the previous ones.

Unfortunately, the way that they tie Mary and The Order into this movie is silly as fuck. And I kind of don't understand how you fuck that up. Daddy Crane was the former cult class president, and he spent years prepping Mary for ????? by giving her a drug that does ???? They don't explain it at all. But this drug is what eventually leads to her getting sick. This would be pretty cool if they explained any of this. We see Mary being used as a ritual component, and the ritual is not explained to us in any conceivable way. We don't know what this mystery drug is, what effect it has, or why it's important to the cult. We don't know what the cult wants for Mary. These are things that are really frustrating because they could have been so fun and cool.

On to my biggest issue with this thing. James and Mary aren't married. Mary is James's ex-girlfriend. We don't know how long they were dating, just that they got to the point where they were living together and then one day after witnessing Mary in the middle of a nonsensical cult ceremony he freaks out and leaves. This fucks up the Silent Hill 2 storyline so badly in so many ways.

James's entire inner conflict is centered around Mary being his wife. He can't be unfaithful to her because she is his wife. He has to support her through her illness because she is his wife. He has to have hope that she's still out there because she is his wife. He loses his mind because she is his wife. The porny murder nurses come to haunt him because his thoughts strayed from Mary while he was with her in the hospital. He doesn't kill Mary as a mercy, but to absolve himself from the duties of being her husband. And then he loses his mind because of his own actions.

Changing their relationship to be a boyfriend and girlfriend that had a falling out and broke up after an undisclosed amount of time together doesn't have the same intensity or emotional weight as Mary being his dead wife. James is so confused to get that letter because, even though he has repressed the memory, he knows that she is dead. He was with her in the hospital. Movie James was apart from Mary when her health started declining, seemingly only saw her in the hospital once, and then killed her because she asked him to.

There was a point very early on where I thought, "Oh, James was a reckless douche before meeting Mary, but by the time they're married he has cleaned up his act." But that isn't the direction they went for at all. He was a douchebag artist who became a douchebag boyfriend and then does nothing interesting or likeable for the rest of the movie. He isn't a conflicted husband, he's just some fucking guy. In a way this movie makes Mary the antagonist. She doesn't actively do anything evil, but every problem comes from her and who she is, not from James. Instead of a hell world shaped by James's guilt, it's a nonsensical hell world that some random fucking guy named James stumbled into.