The Silent Hill universe is without a doubt one of the most creepy, terrifying and eerie worlds ever to exist. The creatures that can be found in the darkest areas of this universe are the vivid representation of our deepest fears and even though it’s quite unsettling to look at them, we can not argue that the creativity implied to create such monsters, is pure art.
But a question that might’ve never popped into our minds is, how were these horrific creatures created?
Giving life to these monsters was no easy task. Christophe Gans, the director of the Silent Hill movie, had a clear idea of how he wanted each of the creatures to look, move and behave. His mantra for making each monster was “Disturbing, but not disgusting” and he kept on reminding this to everyone involved in the making of the movie.
Patrick Tatopoulos was the man in charge of the creatures effects meanwhile Paul Jones was the man behind the make-up effects. With a mixture of reality and nightmares, these monsters came to life, even though they were supposed to be fictional characters Tatopoulos and Jones always tried to add certain “human” aspects to it, making the creatures way more disturbing.
Michael Cota was entitled to become the “Armless Man”. He had to wear a two-piece costume: a pair of skin-tight silicon legs and some sort of plastic foam rib cage. It was designed to be a costume that covers the whole body, it comes with a mouthpiece that has a tube attached to it, where Cota was able to breathe through.
Another challenging monster to create was the Grey Child. The idea was to have the skin of the creature sliding backwards, without deforming the skull and jaw of the monster. The costume was made of foam latex and it was a whole bodysuit along with some plastic hands and a head… the whole process of preparation took them two and a half hours to make. The lucky one to wear this every day was Yvonne NG and even though she must scream to be heard from the inside of the suit, she describes the whole work as absolutely beautiful.
Some of the most popular monsters and definitely most iconic within the Silent Hill universe are the Nurses. For the movie, Tatopoulos thought of staying true to the original design from the game and make a couple of masks that had a small mouth opening which could be modified later on with CGI. Meanwhile, Jones created twenty latex nurse costumes made with zip ties and velcro in order for them to stay extremely tight to the body. These dancers had to train a choreography every day, keeping their movements synchronized and also, very creepy.
Radha Mitcher who plays the lead character, Rose Da Silva, mentions that her favorite monsters ever appear in this movie. Something she likes about these monsters is that they are bizarre and creepy and they look like they come out of some sadomasochists handbook. She also mentions that her all-time favorite monster from Silent Hill was the Armless Man, played by Michael Cota.
You can watch the Making of Silent Hill on the following video.Which is your favorite Silent Hill creature?