The 1960s, which Silent Hill f is set in, is further back. Japan in the 1960s was a time of civil unrest, when "old" Japan & "new" Japan was at an all-time high in confliction, the government was changed & uprooted many rural Japanese people's lives.
Mass industrialization lead to the destruction of many small towns, leaving many homeless w/nowhere to go. As Silent Hill is about a small town, that might be relevant. There was also a big social issue in 1950s/1960s Japan about prostitution of minors, which has a really
dark, conspiracy ridden & complex history I can't get fully into here, but it's worth noting. Also a time many workers who protested were beaten to death who wouldn't move from their land.
I suspect w/Ryukishi07's love for historical horror pieces, probably relevant.
The flowers blooming in the Silent Hill f trailer are the "Red Spider Lily", which only grow in Japan. Also known as the "Death Flower", or, "The Flower of the Other Shore". It ties to a story of the Sanzu River, which is believed to bridge the world of the dead.
The Sanzu River is supposed to be a trial of the Soul where the weight of one's sins in life drag you to its depths if they're too heavy. It is split into three trials, bridge, a stretch of deep waters, & finally a snake-infested ocean. The reason in many Japanese funerals put the casket to water is to let the Soul pass through these trials it must face to enter the afterlife.
Obviously, that might tie a bit strongly into Silent Hill's themes.
I'll also mention Torii Gate specifically looks like a very famous one from Miyajima Island.
So, backtracking now to the trailer itself.
We begin w/a shot of a rice field on a foggy day. The scarecrow is what catches my attention; It's wearing a schoolgirl uniform, abve water, with its body gnarled & twisted, but also the wood seems to be growing even though it shouldn't, the arm turning into a root. I can't shake the feeling that scarecrow is full of meaning.
We see a shot of an old-fashioned Japanese town. There's a store to the right which promises toys & goods for children. I believe its in this store we see the Okiku doll.
The Okiku Doll is a famous Japanese urban legend about a doll who's hair keeps on growing, specifically its supposed to be the growing hair of a dead child.
You're going to start seeing some themes of death in relation to children here, its literally all over this trailer.
We see a school girl standing in front of a dead gnarled tree in front of a broken statue Jizo Statue. The Jizo Statue is supposed to be a charm to SPECIFICALLY help dead children pass on easier to the afterlife, of the belief children deserve more a chance to get into heaven than adults, a spiritual guide to make sure children's souls pass on pleasantly. Of course, the implication of a broken Jizo Statue is telling. We also see the flowers growing & festering around the broken statue & the dead tree. This is also where I'm going to mention a Silent Hill 1 connection. White Claudia was a plant that only grew in Silent Hill, which was used by the Cult for its mystical & psychedelic properties in religious ceremonies. Used also to create the SH drug, PTV, which Kaufmann sold, & Lisa in SH1 was on.
Its never really explained why a flower that only grows in Silent Hill is given attention to in SH1, but its mentioned these flowers "grow near water" & near death. Its also shown in Origins' bad ending Kaufmann was doing experiments w/White Claudia on patients. But again this is a very underexplored area of the Silent Hill mythos, but might be important here.
This is where we begin to see a theme of "infection" in the trailer. We see red stringy roots grow out of the environment, framed around the school girl, walking in a daze into a more industrialized part of the town, dragging a pipe along. This is where everything starts coming together.
The girl in a daze here vaguely reminds me of Rena from Higurashi. All of the trailer to this point being set in a clearly rural place to then transition to a more industrial place sheeted in metal. She's walking vaguely nurse-like in the SH series, & red stringy roots begin to grow rapidly in the environment, infecting the town. A literal infestation. To drive the themes even more, we get a shot back inside of the store, seeing the Okiku Doll, now w/longer hair than before, but the stringy roots especially growing & wrapping themselves around the doll.
The theme of these roots infecting & destroying children continues as we see the earlier school girl, seemingly coming from a fight, w/clear injuries, here clothes slightly torn, limping, no longer w/her pipe, as a bunch of roots rapidly grow all around & begin to ensnare her. Noticably, when the roots touch her skin, it becomes immediately infected. We also begin to see a theme of the roots sucking blood out & growing from becomes relevant, thematically it could even be tied to the Okiku Doll's hair growing. The girl struggles against & tries to run away, but can't escape as flowers grow everywhere over the town. Funnily enough, the piano fortes in this scene.
We now see the Schoolgirl, floating on a bed of overgrowing flowers, the roots holding her down. She's floating to the Torii Gate (which is supposed to signify the movement from the ordinary to the sacred, a transition in the world), not moving at all.
Down the river, we see various body parts severed begin to float down past her. They don't seem to be her limbs though, possibly a suggestion in her daze she butchered someone. From the limbs, a bunch of holes appear, & a bunch of flowers begin to grow from the flesh & blood. We hear a squelching sound of meat as the flowers bloom. The flowers begin to bloom over the entire river, stopping her from passing through the Torii Gates. This also ties into all of the earlier imagery; the flowers are preventing dead children from passing onto the afterlife.
They destroyed the guardian spirit that helped kids move on, they infest & wrap themselves around children & the spirits of children, & they bloom to prevent the girls from being able to cross the Sanzu River. It reminds me a lot of how Alessa wasn't allowed to die in SH1.
Flowers begin to grow all over her body, we hear actually a last choked breath from the girl, see a tear come from her eyes, which we no longer can see covered by flowers. Then, we begin to hear some squelchy meat sounds, and begin to see blood form around her face, &
warch grotesquely as her face peels off, seeing the roots growing inside of her.
Hopefully that was all interesting, & gives some insights into maybe some of the themes of Silent Hill f, meaning to the imagery, & some ways it may connect to Silent Hill.
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