Tuesday, February 8, 2011

More screaming: The Others (2001)

The Others opens with a scream. Nicole Kidman screams herself awake. She sits up in bed, confused and off balance and we watch as she realizes where she is. We watch her come to the conclusion that it must have been a nightmare that woke her up. Without any other information, the audience is left believing it was a nightmare, too. It feels cheap at first, to open with a scream that doesn't mean anything, but as the movie goes on it becomes clear that this isn't a movie built on cheap scares. The scream is a clue, and it's the good kind of clue, where you don't realize what it is until you're looking back on the movie trying to make sense of things.



Later in the film there's another scream. One of the children is screaming, and Nicole Kidman has to unlock a series of doors in the house to get to them, scrambling and panicking as we hear the voice screaming for its mother. It's tense, sure, but it isn't scary until she opens that final door and the boy is just sitting there calmly. It wasn't him that screamed. The screaming starts again, and this time it sounds more like the girl, and so Nicole Kidman starts running again, and again her child is just sitting there with her homework. It takes the tense panic of a horror movie scream and at the last second it twists it into an unsettling quiet moment instead.

The Others is such a great ghost story. I'm going to give away the twist ending here, but this movie came out a decade ago, and there is a scene at the end that I have to mention. And, I think it should be said that the twist in this movie is anything but a gimmick. Watching it again, knowing the twist, only made the movie more satisfying.



At the end, when you learn that Nicole Kidman and her children are dead, there is an unexpectedly touching moment where they are leaning against the wall, hugging, and she tells them about their murders and her suicide. She tells them about how she put the gun to her forehead and pulled the trigger and then... nothing. And how suddenly she could hear their laughter in the next room! God had given her another chance! And then one of the children says, "are we in limbo?" and she says she doesn't know. She doesn't even know if limbo exists. It's a moment of honesty that is very satisfying from a character who has been trying to deny what she knows for the whole movie. This whole scene is such a satisfying conclusion to the relationship arcs between the characters that you almost forget this is a ghost story, but then she holds them tighter and says, "I do know one thing, though. This house is ours. Say it with me, children. This house is ours."

And their three voices repeat again and again, while the camera shows the empty rooms of the house, "This house is ours. This house is ours. This house is ours."

10 comments:

  1. Fuck yes! I love this movie.
    I agree, watching it a second time made the movie completely different for me, great in a new way. Something that's interesting to me are movies you can only watch once and see it the way you did that first time.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This movie is so underrated! So tense and scary, I love it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is one of my favorite films. Unfortunately, someone gave away the ending to me before I watched it, but surprisingly it didn't ruin it for me.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I especially love the music score, and the fact that the writer/director took the care to compose it himself. Pretty, creepy and understated; very fitting.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'd forgotten about that moment at the beginning. I'm glad you reminded me of it. It really does add to the story. It's time to watch this one again, I think. Excellent ghost story and excellent post. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Amazing horror movie. It was diffidently not a standard movie that uses things jumping at you and gore for scares. I bought it on Blue-Ray when I first found out about it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I just watched this for the first time a few days ago and my favorite part was when she investigates the piano music at night [You also only see her sleeping in bed once, she is always awake] and she just stands there at the door making it creak and listening to it. After the reveal you think back and realize that all the while the new owner of the house is freaking out because the door is opening and closing on it's own and making a creaking sound. So he slams it shut. Who's haunting who, I suppose!

    ReplyDelete
  8. I have this movie on DVD but I don't like it much. I bought it because Elaine Cassidy is in it and I'm a big fan of hers. But her part in this film is very small. The film is okay but not anywhere near my favorites.

    ReplyDelete
  9. This is one of my favorite horror movies, too. I got sick of people calling it gimmicky a long time ago and I'm happy to see you're not one of them. This post convinced me it's time to watch it again. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  10. I loved this movie but my appreciation for it was undercut by the fact that I had just finished watching The Sixth Sense. Thus it felt derivative, in that the sudden twist ending where the protagonist is revealed to be dead failed to shock or cause the same sense of vertigo as the film rewrote itself in my memory. Instead, I unfairly said, "Ah, just like the Sixth Sense."

    Still, this essay has definitely made me want to go back and watch it again, so thanks!

    And oh, how cool in retrospect is the return of the husband?

    ReplyDelete