8 Horror Movies With Surprising Deeper Meanings

2006’s Silent Hill was supposed to be entirely female driven. There is a subplot with Sean Bean that feels disconnected from the rest of the movie. The only reason the out-of-place subplot exists is because screenwriter Roger Avery only added in Sean Bean’s character after getting screenplay notes back from the studio complaining about the lack of men in the movie. The lack of men, though, is the entire point. The film takes all the monsters from the video game it is based on, which were manifestations of a male protagonist’s sexual frustrations as his wife was dying, and gender swaps the perspective.

In the game, the nurses represent the male protagonist’s guilt for sexualizing the medical professionals caring for his terminally ill wife. These monsters are faceless and zombie-like, their only notable human features being their slender female figures and large breasts. When this is viewed from a female perspective, the nurses become a representation for the horrific ways men sexualize women, ignoring their faces and personality.

The movie goes all in on female horror with the children made from ash representing the fear and pressure of motherhood and Pyramid Head symbolizing male sexual brutality. Director Christopher Gans even goes as far to describe the scene with Pyramid Head stabbing at an elevator our heroines are hiding in as a rape scene.

If you still need convincing that Silent Hill is about the horrors women face, one of the first monsters our heroines see upon entering Silent Hill is an ominous phallic with legs that spits at them.