I do really try to fill in the gaps of my cinematic experience, and The Others has been on my personal list to finally get around to, but it was one of those movies my ex-wife would watch rather frequently if she found it on somewhere, and that meant I more or less knew what happened while mostly only seeing the middle of the movie when a one-time Doctor Who came back to the house. And I also knew more or less how the twist ending goes.
That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the movie for what it is and see how the thing turns out when I finally get to see the whole thing. Anyway, here we are.
Grace Stewart (Nicole Kidman) is living in a giant countryside estate with her two young children Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley). She hires three servants who just walk up to the house out of the perpetual fog outside, an older couple and a younger woman who can’t or won’t talk. She has some strict rules. For health and safety reasons due to the war, the children are to be shielded from sunlight at all times, and doors must be kept locked, with no more than one door open to any given room at a time. It seems a bit much, but Grace is, if nothing else, overprotective.
And then the strange noises begin, with Anne in particular claiming to see a young boy named Victor. The common assumption would be to think the house is haunted, but there seems to be something more going on, with the older cook and the groundskeeper perhaps knowing more than they let on. No one ever actually seems to leave the grounds, and when Grace finally tries, she doesn’t get that far without coming back with her soldier husband Charles (Christopher Eccleston). But shouldn’t he be off at the war? Why is he home? And why does he seem to think something isn’t right?
Saying more than this, even for a 19 year old movie, feels like saying too much to the uninitiated. There is a twist ending, and all things being equal, it is rather clever. Kidman has always excelled at playing cold fish, emotionally uptight women fighting for control, and her Grace is another great example of that. She wants control over a situation where no one seems inclined to really listen to her. The servants always seem to be disobeying her even though there’s no proof it’s them causing troubles, Anne is a royal terror, and Charles barely stays long enough to really make himself at home again. Nicholas might be the exception there when his sister isn’t daring him into doing things he doesn’t want to do, but there’s something out on the grounds that, apparently, Grace and the children shouldn’t see.
The Others is a creepy movie. The scares come from atmosphere more than anything else, with the movie given an eerie feeling throughout the narrative. That’s the kind of horror I can dig, but this really was a case where knowing how the movie turned out in the end somewhat ruined the experience for me. I’m not sorry I watched it, but I think I would have enjoyed it so much more if I didn’t know what was going to happen in the last twenty minutes.
Grade: B
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