‘Are you mad? I am your daughter…’
A Spanish director and an Australian lead is perhaps an odd combination to produce a classic British ghost story but that is undoubtedly what The Others is. Cast from the same mould as The Turning of the Screw and The Woman in Black, this post-Gothic horror has become all but forgotten in recent years despite the memorable twist and the fact that in terms of box office, it remains one of the highest-grossing horror films of all time. Let’s dive in…
Grace (Nicole Kidman) is pleased to find herself a new housekeeper in the shape of the motherly Mrs. Mills (Fionnula Flanagan) after all of her previous staff mysteriously disappear in the night. Grace’s children Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley) suffer from a rare condition that makes them hypersensitive to sunlight, so their vast mansion is always draped in shadow. Both children complain of seeing ghostly apparitions throughout the house (the titular ‘others’) and perhaps Mrs. Mills is not as benevolent as she first appears.
Writer-director Alejandro Amenábar here crafts a classic ghost story that harks back to the Victorian age despite being set in the aftermath of WWII. He imbues the whole thing with a gothic timelessness that comes to make more sense as the story unfolds. One of the reasons why this film perhaps hasn’t endured as much as something like The Sixth Sense is that once you know the twist, The Others really is robbed of much of its visceral power. Having said that, Amenábar does a great job in creating a foreboding and ominous atmosphere and Kidman is outstanding in a role that she found to be one of the most emotionally gruelling of her career. It helps that the two child actors are solid also, with Mann particularly impressive in what is a hefty role for one so young, and the second-act appearance of Christopher Eccleston provides a shot in the arm for a film that could so easily have become repetitive and stale.
Revisiting The Others over 20 years later, it is clear that it has had a ripple effect across the horror community. While it doesn’t get the credit it deserves now, it is a clear influence on the work of James Wan and Mike Flanagan and it stands as a rare horror film that is a massive success, an original screenplay and one that never resorted to diminishing returns in the form of numerous sequels. This is a film that stays with you. The implications are both mind-boggling and genuinely horrific. A minor classic of the genre.