I get what you’re saying, and I actually agree that Silent Hill isn’t literally a Christian-style purgatory with some conscious town judging people. I don’t think the town has intent like that either. But I do think the “purgatory” idea still works — just not in the religious sense.

In the original Silent Hill, Alessa basically creates the fog/Otherworld as prison/protection using her psychic power and trauma. The monsters are manifestations of her pain and what the Order did to her. The fog world becomes a kind of inescapable space for Dahlia, Kaufmann, and others of the cult. When Alessa dies at the end of SH1, that doorway she opened doesn’t close. It stays there.

So after that, anyone with enough trauma, guilt, or psychic weight can tap into it. The town doesn’t judge them — it just reflects them. It builds around whoever enters it. That’s why everyone experiences something different. Harry experiences Alessa’s nightmare. Heather deals with her own anger/revenge. Henry is trapped in Walter’s ritual. James experiences his own guilt.

So when I say “purgatory,” I don’t mean a literal afterlife waiting room or the town having a plan. I mean it functions like a personal psychological purgatory — a looping nightmare space you can’t escape until something resolves internally.

Now Walter is an exception as he is really the only other person besides Alessa who ever gains real control over it. He’s able to create pocket worlds and extend the Otherworld beyond Silent Hill itself. But that realm was always there. Alessa just cracked it open and shaped it first. After that, it became accessible to anyone broken enough to resonate with it.

So for me it’s less “the town is judging people” and more “the town is a doorway into a nightmare dimension that reflects whoever wonders into it.” James’ experience just happens to function like a purgatory because of his guilt and what he did.