Top 25 Greatest Halloween Films: #23 — 'The Others' (2001)

#23: The Others (2001)

I’m not sure which I admire most about writer/director Alejandro Amenábar’s beautifully crafted haunted house spooker, how well he executes the ingenious concept of telling his story from the point of view of ghosts who don’t know that they’re the ones haunting the house or the mind-blowingly effective sound design that adds a subliminal layer of tension and suspense to everything, including the seemingly innocent actions of a door closing or key turning. Regardless, this is one of the rare modern horror films that earns its considerable scares with no onscreen violence of any kind. That distinctive quality, combined with pitch perfect performances and a thoroughly engrossing mystery all told in a tight 101 minutes, makes for the kind of frights the whole family can enjoy.

Set in a remote mansion on the Channel Islands just after the end of WWII, Grace (Nicole Kidman), a tightly wound woman whose husband never returned from the war, always appears to be on the verge of losing it as she attempts to hold on to a semblance of normalcy for the sake of her two sickly children, Charles and Anne. Any light brighter than a candle might kill both children and so, as she explains to her three new servants, the house must be treated like a submarine with each door locked behind you in order to compartmentalize the light and ensure the children aren’t accidentally exposed.

With the arrival of these servants – who may or may not be part of the problem – comes a series of inexplicable and unsettling occurrences. Anne swears there’s someone else in the house, spirits in the form of a boy named Victor and his family who want the place for themselves. When a thorough search turns up nothing and no one, Grace is not only faced with the possibility that Anne might be right, but also a crisis of her devout Catholic faith. Eventually this will all lead to a number of troubling revelations, the least among them being that our protagonists are the spirits, not Victor and company.

For my money, this is the last truly impressive performance of Nicole Kidman’s career. The Academy Award-winner knocks it out of the park as a woman you very much want to sympathize with even as you can’t quite get a grasp of who she really is. The importance of this performance in paying off the film’s final reveal can’t be under-estimated. Also, at the risk of being accused of ad hominem, this is also the last time Kidman looked, well, real. An actor’s physicality is as important a part of their arsenal as anything else, and whatever it was that so plasticized Kidman’s delicate beauty has become something of a distraction ever since.

From the moment of the terrified scream that announces the story, “The Others” not only wraps you up in its damp and creepily quiet atmosphere, but along the way takes the time to examine the many unanswered questions of faith and God and what happens after we die for our sins without hitting you over the head with trite answers. In a word, Amenábar delivers an intelligent story, one that’s even better the second time around.

—–

What didn’t make the countdown: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

When first released during the winter of ’84 I was a high school senior, the demographic writer/director and horror legend Wes Craven was targeting, and hit the target he did with an incredibly successful venture that would spawn a ton of sequels and horror icon Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). For whatever reason, Freddy just never did anything for me. In fact, I find the story of a child killer who stalks the dreams of attractive teens (Johnny Depp among them) more fun to watch today than I did at the time. Though never scary or even suspenseful, Englund infuses the chaos with a nice sense of humor and because it wasn’t self-consciously created to work as one, “Nightmare” is pretty effective as a wayback machine to those halcyon days when Ronald Reagan ran America, Van Halen ruled the radio, Redd Foxx was still alive, and we still had “Married With Children” to look forward to, to help us through life after high school in the real world.