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| “ | My father was a good man. He didn't believe in revenge. But I do. | „ |
| ~ Anne Marie Cunningham confronting Murphy. |
Anne Marie Cunningham is the anti-heroic secondary antagonist in the 2012 video game Silent Hill: Downpour, the eighth installment of the Silent Hill franchise, as well as the titular main protagonist in the tie-in comic book Anne's Story.
She is the daughter of the deceased Frank Coleridge, in which she blames Murphy Pendleton for murdering him. This explains her hostility and prejudices against him. She follows Murphy through Silent Hill, often showing up at the most inconvenient of times.
She was voiced by Kristin Price.
Biography[]
Past[]
Her father being an officer played a strong role into Anne becoming one herself at Wayside. Anne was married to a man named Mark Cunningham.
One day (years prior to Silent Hill: Downpour), her father ended up in a vegetative state during a huge riot at Ryall State Prison after being beaten by an inmate. Anne looked after him, and this caused a rift between her and Mark. Frank spent years in a wheelchair as a vegetable. Unfortunately for Anne, Frank eventually died.
Suspecting Murphy Pendleton because he was apparently involved with the riot and Frank's death (despite the fact that George Sewell was actually responsible), and wanting revenge (murder) for her father, Anne slept with the warden of Wayside, Leonard B. Trent, for a transfer. However, word got out, and her reputation was diminished, ending her marriage with Mark. Anne never told Mark what truly happened because she had to keep her word to Leonard Trent. Anne was sent in a spiral of guilt and shame, but she got what she wanted: a chance to kill and seek revenge on Murphy. Eventually, the transfer to Ryall was successful.
Silent Hill: Downpour[]
During Murphy's transfer from Ryall State Prison, Anne oversees his boarding of the prison bus and supervises the prisoners during their transfer. The road suddenly ends and the bus crashes. Anne and Murphy both survive the bus crash, and she begins relentlessly pursuing him through Silent Hill Woods. Soon after the crash, Anne threatens Murphy with a gun and tries to apprehend him before losing her footing and grabbing onto a ledge above a deep ravine. The player is given the choice of trying to save Anne or leaving her to her fate. Regardless of the players' choice, she falls anyway. Anne's Story confirmed that Murphy choosing to try to save her from falling off the cliff is the canon choice.
Anne survives the fall and has a hallucination of M. Koons turning into a monster. She enters the Devil's Pit mines and finds a wheelchair and a nametag with "F. COLERIDGE" on it. Soon, Anne has a second hallucination of Murphy Pendleton beating a body, but it turns out to be Freddie Gates, one of the inmates from the bus transfer, beating Willis, another officer. Freddie points a gun at Anne, but is immediately killed by a Weeping Bat. John P. Sater comes to Anne's rescue from a hoard of Weeping Bats. Anne recalls Sater's involvement in the train accident causing the deaths of eight children and notices their ghosts on the train. Anne attempts to make Sater stop the train, but he tells her that the children will not let him. As the ghost children turn monstrous, they attack Anne and she wakes up in the train with no one else around. Anne then sees Murphy.
Anne forces Murphy against a wall and proceeds to search him, only to find her mourning police badge, which Murphy found earlier in his new clothes. Shocked by the discovery, Anne angrily asks Murphy where he got the badge, and states that "people like him" don't deserve to live. She positions her gun with the intent of shooting Murphy, but is unable to do so and drops to the ground. Anne then instructs Murphy to go away, demanding he leave her alone.
Anne sees the Wheelman, the manifestation of her father's memories, together with a Nurse. As Anne approached them, the Nurse stabbed at her. Devil's Pit shifts into the Otherworld. Behind her was a monster, manifested from her sexual experiences with Leonard B. Trent. She ran away from it and again, approached the Wheelman, which she told "him" that she was good and sobbed, lying on the floor.
At that time, the world instantly shifts back to the Fog World, and what shocked her was Howard Blackwood, who was suddenly beside her. As she looked around, what she realized that she was now in the town of Silent Hill. Howard told her that he knew all about the bus crash because of Murphy, who told him. He also told her that he was going to the radio station in the Centennial Building, other than to be cautious about the "rain" which was about to come. Before Anne could ask him further, he disappeared. Anne then heads to the radio station, which foreshadowed her third encounter with Murphy, together with Bobby Ricks.
Anne makes her way into the WLMN FM station, interrupting a conversation between Murphy and Bobby Ricks over finding a way out of town. Anne once again draws her gun on Murphy and asks Bobby to hand her his phone, only to realize that it doesn't work. Seconds later, a pack of Screamers ambushes the radio station, splitting the group up.
Meanwhile, in Murphy's perspective, young Anne appears very briefly in the Centennial Building Otherworld, running across a bridge above the water slide. Soon afterward, the adult Anne is seen running across a second bridge.
Young Anne is seen at St. Maria's Monastery towards the end of the visit, but is alluded to when Murphy encounters the manifestation of his son Charlie. He claims she is "always crying" and "knows things", and also believes that Murphy is the Bogeyman and warns the boy not to go anywhere near him. She also tells the boy that Murphy killed his son. Murphy often sees her wandering around the monastery before running away from him and locking the door behind her, sometimes laughing or gasping in the process. On one instance she can be seen sitting in a chair and singing the nursery rhyme "Itsy Bitsy Spider".
After the boy is killed by the Bogeyman, Murphy mourns his death and calls out Charlie's name, realizing the boy represents his son. Young Anne finds the two and screams, accusing Murphy of killing the boy before running off in terror. Murphy chases after her, fearing that the Bogeyman will kill her too. He eventually finds her in the monastery's loft, tending to the Wheelman. Murphy approaches them and tries to save the girl from the creature, but the floor beneath him breaks and he falls.
Back in Anne's perspective, Anne and DJ Ricks found themselves in a large hanging cage, in front of the clock of the Centennial Building, with Screamers approaching. In the cage, Screamers appear and kill Bobby Ricks. The cage falls into Toluca Lake.
As Murphy leaves Silent Hill on a speedboat, Anne appears behind him holding a gun to his head and orders him to turn around. Murphy refuses and tries to convince Anne that going back is not in either of their best interests. Anne states that they have unfinished business, and that their presence in Silent Hill is not coincidental—the town "knows her," and it "showed her things," and it won't let them go until they "finish what they started". Murphy still refuses to turn around and adamantly tells her that she will have to shoot him. Anne obliges.
However, lightning strikes the boat and Anne falls into the lake again. She wakes up in Overlook Penitentiary and sees the Bogeyman by Frank Coleridge's body. She has a flashback of the riot which left her father in a vegetative state and finds Murphy.
Anne claims that Coleridge was a good man while reprimanding Murphy for his actions. Anne readies her gun once more to shoot Murphy and avenge her father, explaining how she had to take care of Coleridge, who was left a vegetable after Murphy's alleged attack. She says that when she looked at him, she could only see a monster: Murphy Pendleton. Anne then reveals that she is Coleridge's daughter and gives a brief eulogy for her father, stating how he was a benevolent person who cared a great deal about other people and how she looked up to and respected him. In this instance, Murphy transforms before her eyes into the Bogeyman. Anne elaborates on how she had to pull strings, call in favors, and do "sick things" in order to have Murphy transferred to her prison, presumably so that she could kill him herself. Anne finally pulls the trigger and shoots Bogeyman Murphy.
In the game, there is a boss battle between the player (as Bogeyman Murphy) and Anne. The player can opt to save Anne or kill her, resulting in different endings.
In the canon Truth and Justice ending, however, through a spiritual flashback (Coleridge appears as a spirit and tells her, "Annie, please... wake up."), it is revealed that while Murphy was present when Frank was beaten into his wheelchair-bound state, it was actually George Sewell who beat Frank and left him in his vegetative state.
Truth and Justice[]
After Bogeyman Murphy decides to spare her, he reverts back to his original human form and Anne forgives him, realizing that he is innocent and was not, in fact, her father's killer. The two embrace, and reappear next to the crashed bus, back in reality. Murphy tells Anne that he must leave before the police arrive on the scene. Anne thanks Murphy for telling the truth, and the two bid each other farewell. Later on, back at Ryall Prison, Anne, having figured out that Sewell was the person truly responsible for Coleridge's death, confronts him in his office so that the two can "have a little talk." She's holding a loaded gun behind her back, and the scene fades to black, implying that she took her revenge and murdered Sewell. The epilogue of Anne's Story confirmed that this is the canon ending but does not reveal what happens to Anne after her confrontation with Sewell, but heavily implies she murdered him because she believes in revenge.
Trivia[]
- Anne is the fourth antagonist from the Silent Hill series to redeem herself, the first being Michael Kaufmann, the second being Vincent Smith, the third being Valtiel. However, she was most likely an anti-hero for most of the game.
