Pyramid Head is perhaps the most recognizable antagonist from the Silent Hill franchise despite only playing a major role in two games from the main series. It’s understandable that the studio would want to include Pyramid Head in the Silent Hill movies, but many fans took issue with this decision—here's how he was changed for the movies.
However, it’s clear that the directors made a concerted effort to set their form of Pyramid Head apart from the version in the game. There are notable differences in which characters Pyramid Head is tied to and how he behaves that indicate he plays a different part in the story of movie canon.
Even within the films the way Pyramid Head is used changes based on the story being told, as the two movies are based on different games and made by different directors. While in the games he serves as a manifestation of guilt and rage, in the movies he acts as a twisted father figure, both enacting the vengeance of and protecting Alessa.
Pyramid Head In The Games Vs The Movies
The Silent Hill movies do a lot of things very well, with the first being widely considered one of the best video game movies made to date. The thing both movies get criticized for the most, though, is their deviation from source material, the biggest of which is the inclusion of Pyramid Head. In the Silent Hill games, Pyramid Head shows up for the first time in Silent Hill 2 as a manifestation of the main character, James Sunderland’s anger and guilt. Near the end of the game, James realizes that Pyramid Head is chasing him because James needed someone to punish him for what he did to his wife.
In the symbology of the game, Pyramid Head is presented as both physically and sexually aggressive, representing James’ feelings of anger, while also indicating James’ unsatisfied sexual desires and feelings of frustration towards his wife. Pyramid Head appears in a butcher or executioner’s outfit, which also echoes James’ guilt over killing his wife. Because Pyramid Head is so inherently tied to James Sunderland as a manifestation of his specific psyche, fans of the series were upset to see the character show up in the films with no reference made to James.
That being said, it’s clear that Pyramid Head has a different role to play in the movies. Since all of the monsters in the Silent Hill games serve as manifestations of the main character’s feelings, audiences would expect for this to be the case in the films as well. However, from the first encounter Rose has in the darkness of Silent Hill, it’s clear that the whole world of Silent Hill and all the inhabitants there, both human and monstrous, are created and held by Alessa.
Looking at Pyramid Head in the movies as an independent character separate from the one in the games, it becomes clear that he represents a sort of twisted father figure for Alessa and then for Heather too in Silent Hill: Revelation. He manifests as both an aggressor and a protector, attacking interlopers in the first film, thus protecting Alessa from anyone unfamiliar. Then, in the sequel, he clears the path for Heather in the asylum and steps in to fight for her in the climax of the film.
In both movies, Pyramid Head clearly echoes Alessa/Heather’s feelings on her own father, showing up as more aggressive and cold in the first film when Alessa has no experience with a father, really, and then becoming more helpful in the second film when Heather’s influence promotes greater allyship between herself and Pyramid Head thanks to her own relationship with her father. Whether fans love Pyramid Head in every game, movie, and incarnation or hate him being included as anything other than a manifestation of James Sunderland’s psyche, he remains one of the most iconic symbols of the Silent Hill franchise.
