The Others --- what? How'd a GOOD one get in here?!?

[peter johnson]

The wife & I went to see The Others on Saturday.  Tasteful, gore-less, & genuinely creepy & unsettling in the way good old fashioned ghost stories can do.
I don't think it was perfectly realized, by any means, but its flaws (few) helped keep it interesting.  Most of you will be able to figure out the jist of the "surprise" ending, but even after I'd guessed it right, I still wasn't prepared for the way it wrapped up everything at the very end.
Oscar nomination for Creepiest Looking Damn Prop Tree in a Cemetary, Ever -- I mean it:  This "tree" looks like Cthulhu on a bad day --
What do ghosts dream about when they sleep?
The Chinese and various other Asian cultures have the idea of ghosts being hungry & able to be fed -- you find this to a lesser extent in some Catholic cultures -- In Mexico, Dios del Muerto, you can leave little skull-shaped sugar candies for your dead family members to eat.
The photo albumns of the dead that figure prominently in the plot are real cultural artifacts -- people really did use to compile such things, especially when photography became more available to the general public in the 1880's.
Nicole Kidmann can look more terrified than any actress today that I'm aware of.  Her being so scared helps the audience get scared of the Invisible Something in the piano room.  There were audience screams when we saw it.
Beautiful photography.  Oscar nomination for Best Use of Fog-making Machinery in a Motion Picture.
This thing can be watched several times to savor what works in it.  A lot of attention was paid to small detail -- say, was that door open or closed?  Could become a classic in time -- we shall see --

[Chadzilla]

Praise from all my friends and acquaintances regarding The Others has been fast and furious.  The wife (who loves these kind of spook shows more than I do, and I love them A LOT) and I can't wait to see it now.  Too bad some jaded viewers may find this 'slow' and 'boring' because it doesn't contain buckets of grue (which isn't a BAD or BORING thing at all).  Let's hope this sleeper does well enough to encourage others (no pun intended) to follow in its path.

[Dr. Abram]

I'm with you on this one Peter. I was impressed with THE OTHERS homage to classic horror movies of the past which depended more on suspense than how realistic your monster looked.

I thought the ending would have worked alot better if the movie had been made two or three years ago (pre- Sixth Sense). They ending I came up with from the movie clues ended up being better than the real ending.

I even wrote a little review about it for a friends website:

http://www.mostmoviessuck.com

[Will]

Hmmm....I actually DIDN't like it, though I agree it's refreshing to see a goreless attempt and the cinematography and production design were quite nice.  It was a little derivative (opening shot lifted from Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West;" a number of shots from De Palma's "Blow Out") in ways that didn't make sense to the subject matter.  And the plot was "Beetlejuice" and "The Sixth Sense" mixed together with a heaping helping of Kidman's and Executive Producer Tom Cruise's Scientology.  The religious dogma/ghostly phenomena dichotomy was heavy handed and clunky.

That said, I will admit that it's a far cry better than the new wave of slasher flicks.....but still not something I can get into or respect as a film.

[peter johnson]

Well, Will, I had to think about your objections -- It's been awhile since I've seen either Blow Up or Out or Once Upon a Time etc., but perhaps you're correct.
I'm surprised that you didn't find it derivative of The Haunting or The Innocents, which I did but I didn't care.
I don't get the Scientology thing at all.  The spookiness in the film, especially at the end, is more derivative of Victorian Spiritualism -- see the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle look-alike guy at the table? -- than anything else.
Sorry you didn't care for it -- myself, I may have to see it again -- I'll look for your objections.