Silent Hill is a horror anthology media franchise centered on a series of survival horror games created by Keiichiro Toyama and published by Konami. The first four video games in the series, Silent Hill, Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill 3, and Silent Hill 4: The Room, were developed by an internal group called Team Silent. The series is set in the fictional American town of Silent Hill, which is heavily influenced by the literary genre of psychological horror. The player characters are mostly "everymen" who are drawn to the town for various reasons. The games deal with themes of personal demons, guilt, and the consequences of ones actions.

The Silent Hill film, directed by Christophe Gans and written by Roger Avary, is based on the video game series of the same name published by Konami). The plot follows Rose da Silva, who takes her adopted daughter, Sharon, to the town of Silent Hill, for which Sharon cries while sleepwalking). The film talks about people who deny their own fate and therefore fall into the trap of alternate dimensions). It "deals with the terror of loneliness, the fear of the dark, the fear of taking responsibility for your own evil side, and the fear of your own fate").

It is worth noting that the town of Silent Hill is not entirely fictional. The town of Silent Hill, West Virginia, is actually Centralia, Pennsylvania. In May 1962, the city ordered to have the local landfill burned in an attempt to clean up the town. The fire spread to the coal mines beneath the town, and the underground fire has been burning ever since. The abandoned town has become a tourist attraction and has inspired the Silent Hill franchise.