The Others

If you enjoy watching quality horror films and haven’t had the chance to view The Others directed by Alejandro Amenabar starring Nicole Kidman then you should make it the next horror movie you view. If you’ve already seen it, then you’ll know what I’m speaking on. After taking a class on the philosophy of horror films and watching a number of classic and contemporary horror films, an appreciation for the quality films can be established. This is one of those high quality films. This film gives the audience a strongly eerie and suspended feeling throughout the whole movie. In all actuality, I had no idea exactly what was happening to the very beautiful yet very unnerving Nicole Kidman and her children in that house. At first glance, this film is a pretty tight copy of the classic horror film The Innocents in which a nanny comes to an old mansion to watch over the kids. Weird things start happening in the mansion and the kids act very shady about the whole situation. The nanny loses her mind and begins taking it out on the kids and the rest of the servants who live in the house. The whole film has an air of suspense where the audience has no idea if the supernatural is occurring or if more likely the nanny is just gone insane. The Others begins with a similar storyline with the exception of the crazy nanny in The Innocents is the mother played by Nicole Kidman who was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance. When strange things start happening in her mansion, Kidman along with her children all react with a naturalistic approach thinking that there are intruders in the house. Everyone in the house have different views of what is happening. The kids say they see the intruders, the mother at first doesn’t believe her children until she experiences their presence and then starts on a rampage with a gun to find these intruders in her house. The servants act strange from the beginning and see far too calm until we realize that they know what is happening in the house, but they never tell anyone, including the audience. This movie like The Innocents has an air of suspense but this sense of suspense is rooted more deeply in the supernatural. The audience should sense that the house is haunted but is unsure because of the stubbornness of the mother and her children to believe in ghosts and the suspicious servants.
From this point the two storylines of The Innocents and The Others seem very similar with alterations to attitudes and relationships of the characters. What puts The Others over the edge and into a much greater category of the unknown is something seen in very few horror films, a plot twist at the end. Unlike in The Innocents, the whole situation is discovered and all events in the house become much clearer as to why they occurred. A complex plot twist like this gives the audience a truly horrified feeling at the climax of the movie and makes it worth ever second of viewing. This strong sense of revelation for the characters in the film is shared by the audience and the truth is so eerie that it leaves the audience in an uneasy state even after all is finished and over. Want to know what happens? Watch it for yourself to find out.