The Others
A lonely house shrouded by the fog of the English Channel, despite the many empty rooms across the floors it is occupied only by three people, Grace Stewart and her two young children Anne and Nicholas, alone since the servants left a week before with no warning and Grace’s husband Charles not heard from in over a year since he went to fight in the war despite the conflict in Europe having concluded some time before.
The children a handful due to their extreme photosensitivity, the curtains always drawn in any room they enter, the arrival of a trio of new servants led by kindly Bertha Mills is a godsend to Grace, but in their wake come other troubles, Anne insisting that there is someone else in the house, “the others” an unseen child named Victor and his family, Grace flatly refusing to accept that ghosts exist but slowly becoming more haunted by noises and occurrences she cannot rationalise.
Regarded as a modern classic of the haunted house genre, The Others (Los otros) was a Spanish produced English language film originally released in 2001, launching a wave which saw Spanish horror such as the similarly moody El Orfanato and the contrastingly shocking [•REC] given wider distribution than they might otherwise have received in the same way Japanese horror had broken through to the mainstream the previous decade.
Written and directed by Abre los ojos’ Alejandro Amenábar, the prospects of The Others were boosted by the presence of a recognisable star, Nicole Kidman, increasingly distressed and frantic as she becomes convinced that there is indeed someone else in the house whom she cannot see and frustrated with her children, played superbly by Alakina Mall and James Bentley, the disobedient and wilful Anne particularly difficult as she torments her brother and infuriates her mother with her impulsive curiosity and refusal to recant her statements.
Balancing them is Fionnula Flanagan as Bertha, a warm and sympathetic presence who tries to soothe the children and doesn’t rise to the demands of her highly-strung employer with her demands of a fixed routine, though unfortunately the great Eric Sykes is underused in one of his final roles as groundskeeper Edmund Tuttle and Christopher Eccleston’s brief appearance as Charles serves largely to delay Grace’s comprehension of what is happening rather than progress the film.
Built on creeping oddities rather than jump scares, things which unsettle rather than cause fright, the question which Grace is faced with is whether she is losing her mind, and while twisting the traditional shape of the ghost story into something new though as it tells its story of overwhelming grief and loss through a connection with the beyond there is much of Peter Medak’s The Changeling in The Others, most specifically in the séance and the soundtrack composed by Amenábar, with many of the cues too similar to be coincidence.
The Others is available on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD from StudioCanal now
