Description

Wiz RECOMMENDS The Others

The Others leaves me in a bit of a critical quandary:

I can recognize that the film has some really good, even fantastic, elements that speak of a higher quality than most films.

The first is, undoubtedly, the performance of Nicole Kidman. Her performance as Grace shows the paranoia, unsettled nature and, by the end, what she truly is. Kidman embodies this performance throughout in a film that relies on her to carry it and she does swiftly.

The other is the inversion of the nature of horror and fear. For decades, film has taught us on thing: darkness equals unease and fear.

The whole concept of the kids being photosensitive and therefore can't have natural light shone on them leads to a weird comfort in the dark. Suddenly, light is where discomfort is and it plays with the expectations of unease in an interesting way.

But my main issue, and it's a big one, has to do with the twist of the film.

What's weird is that the twist is executed well enough for a first sitting.

But in my opinion, the point of a good twist is to encourage multiple viewings so you can see how the film pieces together and tell "the true story". And it's in this that The Others doesn't hit the mark.

------SPOILERS FOR The Others --------

When you learn that Grace, the kids and the housekeeping staff are all dead and are actually the ghosts that are haunting the house, there are two issues:

1. Before the first act even ends, it's kind of clear that is what's going on. This has mostly to do with the light/dark concept, but also the fogginess of the exterior and how everything feels so static and unchanging.
   On top of that, the eventual "big hint", the Book of the Dead, hints that there is a haunted element of the house for sure, but it doesn't really show it's relevance until the third act when it's revealed that the housekeepers are also in it.
   Now, the main housekeeper hints towards this already in the beginning with her familiarity with the house, but that doesn't feel that satisfying.
2. The other issue is what Grace has revealed to have done, which was the murder of her children and her eventual suicide.
   To put it bluntly, this feels like an exposition dump. Looking back through the film, it doesn't seem like the film really hints and prods toward that conclusion.
   Now, as a story, it's effective enough. But some of the best twists in storytelling is how it hints towards what the twist is throughout and encourages going through the story again to get what the story is truly about.
   Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think a second viewing is required to get what is going on. It's possible if the film didn't spell it all out so directly that it could have been hinted what Grace did. But would it have hurt the emotional resonance of the story to do so? I'm not quite sure.

------END SPOILERS------

Though I am going to recommend the film, it was still a fairly disappointing watch.

But the film is clearly a well constructed, visually striking film that deserves at least one watch. But it just feels like the eventual storytelling device and the twist isn't all that satisfying in the end.