13 Nights of Shocktober: The Others

 by A.J.

Night 7: Ghost Story Night

“Sometimes the world of the dead gets mixed up with the world of the living.”

The Others

Good ghost stories on film are hard to come by, especially haunted house stories. They usually end up pivoting to demons or possession/exorcism stories. It doesn’t help that any recent haunted house movie has two spectacular pillars to stand up against, each on opposite ends of the spectrum: Poltergeist (1982) on the macabre, even grotesque, special effects heavy end and The Haunting (1963) on the minimalist, atmospheric, psychological end. Spanish writer-director Alejandro Amenàbar’s The Others (2001) rests firmly and comfortably alongside The Haunting''s end of the haunted house spectrum in both the style of ghost story and its quality. 

Set on the English Channel island of Jersey at the end of the Second World War, Nicole Kidman plays Grace, an Englishwoman living in an isolated house with her children, Anne and Nicholas. She does everything she can to protect her children from sunlight because of their dangerous photosensitivity for which there is no cure (though it is not mentioned in the film, this is a real condition called Xeroderma Pigmentosum, or X.P., and before the modern era, children with this condition rarely lived to adulthood). She hires three new servants and instructs them that the curtains must be kept closed at all times and doors must be locked before another one is opened to keep the light out. But things go bump in the night and during the daytime too. The piano which Grace keeps locked up is played mysteriously at night. Anne, the oldest of the children, says she sees and talks to a boy, Victor, who says that the house belongs to his family and Anne and her family will have to leave. The servants seem suspicious, especially Mrs. Mills (Fionnula Flanagan), who is certainly keeping a secret or two from Grace. This is all typical haunted house stuff; almost by the numbers haunted house stuff. The trick director Amenàbar pulls off is staging these scenes effectively through building a foreboding gothic atmosphere. At the center of everything is Nicole Kidman’s performance; we feel her fear so a thing like seeing all of the curtains suddenly missing becomes a frightening sight. 

Anne’s drawing of the Others is appropriately creepy but also a believable child’s drawing. Grace teaching the children the grimmer parts of religion, of the different levels of hell, and a story of two child martyrs and children’s limbo adds as much to the eerie atmosphere as the perpetual fog. There is something inherently spooky about a woman holding a candle or lantern walking down a dark hallway or into a dark room. Since the house has no electricity there are several moments like this. The movie’s signature scene happens when Grace leaves Anne alone in a room wearing her communion dress then comes back and finds something wrong. In a brilliant stroke, the resolution to this scene has the camera swish pan from Kidman not to her daughter but across the room to Kidman’s reaction reflected in a mirror. My favorite scene is simple and expertly done. Grace hears loud footsteps and noises upstairs. She sees that the servants are outside and her children are not upstairs, yet the noises persist. It is a perfect blending of cinematic technique and an actor's performance that puts the audience in the mental and emotional state of the character, allowing us to feel the character’s fear and creating horror.

In the wake of The Sixth Sense it felt like every movie about the supernatural had to have a twist, whether it worked or not. Fortunately, like The Sixth Sense, the secret of The Others enhances the overall viewing experience. Everything that has happened before is cast in a new light, but, most important of all for any twist, it makes sense. The Others plays fair. Whether you guess the conclusion or have seen it before, The Others remains highly effective and very spooky.

The Others is available to stream on The Criterion Channel and Shudder. It is also available on Blu-ray/DVD from The Criterion Collection and is probably at your local library.