SILENT HILL: Homecoming

Silent Hill is a survival horror franchise. It is video games, movies and comic books. Its style is ambient and its themes emotional, psychological and sexual. The first game, the beginning of the franchise, was inspired by Shadow over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft and Twin Peaks, among other things. The second game, the one that defined the franchise, was especially inspired by Twin Peaks.

I love Silent Hill. I loved Twin Peaks before playing, watching and reading Silent Hill. I write books and illustrate the covers. Much of my work is inspired by these two franchises.

My favorite Silent Hill is the games. The second game is inarguably the best… but my personal favorite is the first. My second favorite is typically hated by Silent Hill fans: Homecoming.

I love everything hated by those who hate Silent Hill: Homecoming. The protagonist is an excellent fighter rather than a normal person fighting desperately as a normal person. The Nurses are ubiquitous and highly sexualized.

People argue that Silent Hill is horror, so playing a warrior is inappropriate. They argue that the sexualized Nurses introduced in the second game were as they were symbolically, thus, without context in Homecoming.

The monsters must represent the psychology of the protagonist? What did the Numb Bodies or the Insane Cancers of Silent Hill 3 represent? What about the Split Heads, Mumblers and Air Screamers of the first game?

The protagonist must be a normal person? SPOILER ALERT: The protagonist of Homecoming was born and raised in a sect of the mysterious religion of Silent Hill. His family was charged with hunting and killing monsters that wandered into the real world from the Otherworld. His being a proficient warrior is given context appropriate to the lore!

Another complaint about Homecoming is that it is Western. Silent Hill is Japanese, though set in the United States of America. Japan already made four games. The franchise already has its Japanese flavor. What is so insufferably wrong about an American company making a game set in America?

The only thing I disliked about Silent Hill: Homecoming is that you cannot get the “good” ending unless you euthanize your mother. Other than that, the final act was much better than they were in previous games. There is a villain and the villainy makes grim sense. As strange as the universe is, it was wonderfully humanized.