Alessa Gillespie

Alessa Gillespie is a character in the Silent Hill franchise.

Name
Team Silent originally intended to name her "Asia" after Italian film director Dario Argento's daughter, Asia Argento, but dropped it in favor of "Alessa" when they decided that it was much too uncommon for a name. Although not an Italian name, Alessa is similar to the Italian version of the name Alexis, Alessia. The character is represented by the Empress card in Silent Hill's Tarot symbology.

Symbolism
Although Alessa is not always physically present throughout gameplay, her presence is reinforced by symbolism. Images of wheelchairs, bloody bandages, and halved things are suggestive of her hospitalization and death, and rotating objects such as fans and valves are indicative of her constant cycle of death and rebirth. The burns suffered in her mother's ritual are reflected in writhing shadows and the twisted movements of Silent Hill's creatures, and her rejection of the cult's teachings and of herself as the conduit for calling forth its god are marked by blood-red background tones, recurring bad dreams, and afterimages.

Background
Alessa debuted with the January 31, 1999 release of the video game Silent Hill in North America. The character is born in 1972, with incredible psychic powers, including spiritual intuition and premonition, leading to her being ostracized at school and branded a witch. Her only friend in childhood is Claudia Wolf, who sympathizes with her because she also comes from an abusive family background.

Ritual and Torment
Dahlia becomes convinced that a certain ritual, to birth The Order's God, would likely be a success if she used her daughter as its birth mother. The technique had been performed on other girls that The Order abducted, but all previous attempts had failed. At the age of seven, Alessa is offered as a sacrifice by Dahlia to the god in their house by immolating her body. The plan succeeds, with Alessa becoming pregnant with the deity, which remains suspended in embryotic form. Due to the actions of Travis Grady, a part of the girl's soul escapes and is reborn as a baby found by Silent Hill's protagonist Harry Mason and his wife outside Silent Hill. Harry names the baby Cheryl.

In order to lure the missing portion of Alessa's spirit back to its point of origin, Dahlia intentionally keeps her daughter in a state of excruciating pain for the seven years prior to the first game in order to get her to cry out to her other half and compel her to return. Confined to Alchemilla Hospital's basement and tended to by Lisa Garland, Alessa is given hallucinogenic drugs, further intensifying her torment. Upon Cheryl's return, Alessa's latent psychic abilities are triggered; she shrouds Silent Hill in fog and altered reality to prevent her mother's scheme from advancing. Many of the drastic changes that befall the town in the game, such as the horrific creatures that come to inhabit it, are conjured from her imagination and delusions.

Silent Hill Origins
After being saved by Travis Grady from a house fire at the start of the story, Alessa helps Travis throughout the ordeal in order for him to understand his past and clear up his mind. At the same time, Travis unknowingly helps her to take control over Silent Hill. Once Travis collects the "Future", "Past", "Falsehood", "Truth" and "Present" pieces from various places in the "Otherworld", he assembles the Flauros which liberates Alessa's power. As a result, this allows her to temporarily take control of Silent Hill, transforming the town into its grotesque Otherworld counterpart. She then guides Travis, via a drawn children's map, to the Antique Green Lion, where her burnt body is being used in a summoning ritual by The Order. With the help of Travis (who confronts the Flauros demon in a dream-like vision, containing him and his powers in the pyramid), she uses the power of Flauros to split her soul in half, creating a newborn baby.

As Travis leaves Silent Hill, he sees Alessa once more in his truck's rear-view mirror, holding the baby in her arms and smiling as he heads off. A static radio message can then be heard of a couple, Harry Mason and his wife, who find the baby near the road, and give her the name "Cheryl". Another message is then heard between Dahlia Gillespie and Michael Kauffman, who plots to cast a spell in order to finish the ritual one day.

Silent Hill 1
While searching his missing daughter Cheryl in Silent Hill, Harry Mason is manipulated by Dahlia into believing that Alessa possesses the "Mark of Samael", the mark of a demon. She instructs him to use a sacred item, the Flauros, to stop Alessa from completing Samael's five crests and plunging the entire town into a hellish state of reality known as "Otherworld". Taking the bait, Harry neutralizes Alessa, only to learn that she was really trying to contain Otherworld herself with the "Seal of Metatron" (a talisman that recurs in Silent Hill 3). At the end of the game Dahlia finally combines both halves of Alessa's soul into one to complete the ceremony of the god's birth. Depending on the player's actions during gameplay, Alessa emerges either as a white-clad figure named "Incubator" or the demonic "Incubus", the latter coming about by Dahlia's former associate Dr. Kaufmann throwing a sample of Aglaophotis onto Alessa to prematurely expel the god. In either case, the birthed deity kills Dahlia and fights Harry as the final boss.

Following the defeat of the "Incubus" a fading apparition of Alessa allows Harry's (and Cybil Bennett's if the player fulfills the requirements) escape after handing him a newborn child containing the fused soul of herself and Cheryl, who he raises as his own child.

Silent Hill 3
In Silent Hill 3, seventeen years after the events of the first Silent Hill game, the child given to Harry by Alessa (going by the name Heather) is approached by Claudia Wolf (now a priestess for The Order), who intends to bring about the descent of the cult's god to usher in Paradise. For this to happen Heather must remember her "true self" (Alessa). To nourish the growing fetus within her, Claudia has Harry murdered. A "memory" of Alessa, a dark emotion mimicking her likeness, is encountered by Heather in Silent Hill's Lakeside Amusement Park. This "memory" attacks Heather as a boss enemy, intent on ending the character's life herself to spare her and everyone from further pain after the god is born.

To rid herself of the god, Heather swallows a tablet of Aglaophotis given to her by her father, thereby vomiting it out of her body. Claudia, however, in desperation, devours its remains to birth the god herself. Being born of Claudia's womb, the god personifies her vision of what God would look like, and therefore vaguely resembles Alessa.

Silent Hill Movie
In the 2006 Silent Hill film adaptation Alessa, Dark Alessa and the adaptation's version of Cheryl Mason, Sharon DaSilva, were played by Jodelle Ferland. Director Christophe Gans selected Ferland after viewing her performances in Kingdom Hospital and her screen test for Terry Gilliam's film Tideland. Alessa's older, scarred self was portrayed by Lorry Ayers.

Based on the first four games of the series, with a plot line mainly from the first game, the movie presented Alessa as a good child who was the subject of constant ridicule by her classmates. It is implied that, at the age of nine, she was molested by the janitor of Midwich Elementary School, Colin. Refusing to divulge the name of Alessa's illegitimate father, the film's more sympathetic Dahlia caves in to requests by the cult's Puritanical leader, Christabella, to set things right.

Alessa is burned alive by the cult to "purify" her and supposedly hold off the Apocalypse. When the ritual fails, the fire rages out of control, consuming much of Silent Hill and eventually reaching the town's coal mines. Alessa is pulled out of the blaze, horribly scarred with third degree burns over one hundred percent of her body, and sent to the nearby Brookhaven Hospital. There, she is split into "several Alessas", and is approached by her own dark side.

Alessa inflicts her nightmares onto the town and twists it to punish the people responsible for her suffering.

With the assistance of Rose Da Silva, Alessa is able to penetrate the safe haven of the cult's church by means of possession, and slaughters Christabella and her flock in a scene inspired by the erotic anime Legend of the Overfiend, tearing them apart with living barbed wire. Her appearance at the climax of the film closely resembles the Mary/Maria demon James Sunderland sees at the end of Silent Hill 2 due to the game being Christophe Gans' favorite installment in the Silent Hill series. As Alessa's revenge ends, her good and bad sides unite into one body, and Rose goes home with the complete Alessa.

Christophe Gans notes: Perhaps the common link between all the stories of the Silent Hill world is the concept that this is a place where both reality and personality can be split. I like the fact that this is where many dimensions intersect, and where you can exist on many planes. This fracturing between realities is reflected as a fracturing within a character. Characters can become multiple, like Mary and Maria in Silent Hill 2, and Alessa in SH1. Because this is such an abstract concept, this was the most challenging aspect of trying to adapt the game. The first game tells the amazing story of an adult woman who also exists as two little girls, good and bad doubles representing who she was when she was hurt. We are forced to realize in Silent Hill that we can be our own devil, our own God. This very Asian perception is so completely different to the Anglo/Christian concept of God and the Devil as separate beings. He also says: If we want to explain what happened with Alessa, we are dealing with the theme of doppelgangers. For every fan that has read the synopsis of the first game's story in the strategy guide of Silent Hill 3, they all know that we are dealing with doppelgangers--and it's a very cross-cultural concept, both Japan and Europe have this myth. But in Japan, it means that every character has aspects of a God and aspects of a devil inside them. It's a very shocking concept if we attempt to transpose that into a North American, traditionally Christian perspective. The line between good and evil is much more clearly in North America, especially today. And here we are dealing with a character who has the capacity to split, and when you realize that Alessa is no longer one character, but many, it explains the story of the town. It's interesting because the town itself mirrors this fractured psychology--different dimensions, different doubles of the same person.

Sharon is the manifestation of the good side of Alessa. The baby Sharon is sent outside of the town, where she is adopted by Rose and Christopher Da Silva. Sharon is brought back to Silent Hill nine years later when she begins to have disturbing nightmares about the town.

Dark Alessa is the incarnation of the dark side of Alessa's soul, born of her rage causing her to become "several Alessas". She appears in the road in front of Rose's car, causing her to crash and bringing her into the alternate realms, and leads Rose through the town and narrates Alessa's story.

Director Christophe Gans describes the character, saying:

"'This is where it gets a bit confusing, I think, for those who only want to decipher it from a Judaeo-Christian conception of good and evil. In this scene you can understand that Alessa, in her martyrdom, is visited by the devil, who offers her the chance of vengeance. In fact, from what I know of Japanese folk traditions, which I believe inspired the game to a large extent, I think that what's really happening in this scene is that Alessa is visited by her double. In her pain she's been split into several Alessas.              There's the real Alessa, suffering, there's the evil Alessa, her dark side, who's just visited her, and there's a good Alessa, who's made safe in the real world in the shape of Sharon, the little girl adopted by Sean Bean and Radha Mitchell. I think that's the explanation for how she becomes a multi-faceted character, with different faces and different ages. It's something that's in the game, which intrigues players: why Alessa exists in different guises, at different ages...  Both evil guises, and guises that are... 'human'.'"

Describing the casting for the part, Director Christophe Gans noted:

"'that little girl, played by a little Canadian actress, has to play, in fact, different characters, including the devil.'" "I went, I present myself, and I said, 'You know, Jodelle, you are going to play different characters.' And she say, 'Yeah, I know. And one of them is the devil.' And she told me, 'I always wanted to play the devil.''"

Gans states on the official French Silent Hill website that he hired Jodelle to play "multiple incarnations of a same character".

Actress Jodelle Ferland says:

"'I also play Dark Alessa who is the bad part of Alessa – she's the one who I get to wear the scary make-up for.'" "'Dark Alessa is sort of the bad of Alessa and that's why she's all scary and strange.'"

Silent Hill: Revelation
Revelation retcons the ending of Silent Hill, showing that Sharon remains only the good side of Alessa's soul, rather than having recombined with Alessa and Dark Alessa. Rose uses the Seal of Metatron to return Sharon to the real world, while Alessa's dark side remains in the Otherworld to continue killing cultists. Years later, Sharon goes by the name Heather Mason. Alessa is shown in a hallucination to Heather at her high school.

A second sect of cultists are shown hiding in the Otherworld, though it is never explained how they escaped Alessa's notice. The film vastly changes Alessa's backstory, claiming that the cultists had noticed Alessa had powers, and so knew Alessa would survive the fire, and were actually intending to perform a ritual to impregnate her with their god. Revelation also states that Alessa created Sharon by having her nurse kidnap a newborn from its parents, into which she placed her soul, a contradiction to the first film, in which Sharon is a supernaturally created doppelgänger of Alessa.

Alessa's dark side appears as a darkened teenage girl, who recombines with Heather, making a complete incarnation of Alessa. Once Heather unites with Dark Alessa, Pyramid Head, one of Alessa's monsters, rushes to Heather's aid when she is attacked by the monstrous form of the cult's new priestess.