6: The Others

The Others has one of the best horror premises for a horror movie I've ever heard. Nicole Kidman plays Grace Steward, an extremely strict and protective mother of two children. The children in question suffer from a severe allergy to sunlight, so they must be kept in near complete darkness all the time. They cannot leave their house, and an incredibly complex series of rules is maintained to keep them in near perfect darkness at all times. The children are worried that their mother is going mad, and the mother is worried as well. Meanwhile, the house is being haunted, and they can't leave.

This is the greatest setup I have ever seen. There is huge conflict from without and within. There is the question of what is and isn't real. The classic problem of film's being scariest in the dark when the vast majority of people's time spent awake is during the day: Solved. The eternal question “why not just leave the house if it is being haunted?”: Answered. It would take a considerable amount of time and work to make a film like this bad, and the people who made the film used that time to make it amazing instead.

Nicole Kidman's character is really put through the wringer in this movie. Her husband had just died in the war, and now she keeps hearing things in their house. The new servants she hired seem to be up to something, but she had no evidence but her sneaking suspicions. She has no one to talk to, she can't leave her children alone. They even seem scared of her, because she lost her temper with them once or twice. She can't hide behind her rigid facade forever, something has to give.

This really is a film all about its main character. Yes, there are sneaky servants and nasty ghosts, but it is Grace's reaction to these events that make the movie. Her melancholy infects the rest of the film, giving it a grimness that it would not otherwise have had. Strip it of all its supernatural elements, and you have the story of a mother who has to take care of children even when she can't take care of herself. That is as compelling and unpleasant as the ghosts themselves.

When the film finally get's going, it goes off in a completely unexpected direction. When they finally give an explanation for all of the supernatural goings-on, it is not at all what you expect. But it is the perfect twist: shocking yet inevitable. After having seen it, I could not imagine the film ending any other way. This film manages to be even more powerful each time you watch it, and a lot of that comes down to the ending it has.

The Others took a great premise and went off in a completely different direction. A character driven ghost story, light on frills and thrills. A spellbinding look into a state of mind most people would rather not see. A meditation on duty and dependence. A slow-burning, creepy, dread-filled, tragic, subdued, and, most of all, smart supernatural thriller.