‘Aren't you Maria?’: The Uncanny and the Gothic in Silent Hill 2

Abstract

The attractiveness of the ‘moving image’ to the gothic imagination has begun to receive scholarly attention from the perspective of videogames, and it has been argued that the digital medium renovates gothic ‘milieus’ (transmedial genre labels) by its combination of ludic and narrative properties. This article focuses in particular on the gothic milieu of the uncanny as it appears in Team Silent's 2001 videogame Silent Hill 2. Examining its depictions of the double, animism, and involuntary repetition, this article claims that Silent Hill 2 is sui generis in its depiction of the uncanny, and in this regard must be considered distinctly from the rest of the series. Following Isabella van Elferen's contention that ‘the participatory uncanny of certain games can be identified as the main ingredient of video game Gothic’, this study argues for Silent Hill 2 as a superlative case of the gothic potential of videogames, and of the uncanniness of contemporary, digital media.