Other People's Probems

 The Others (2001) looked like just another haunted house movie, and worse, one with kids. For a while, I had it as a backup movie for our month of Spooktober. But a random comment about the movie, and maybe Nicole Kidman in the starring role changed my mind.

It starts with Kidman waking up screaming - just a nightmare, never mentioned. She is living in a mansion shrouded in fog on the island of Jersey just after WWII. There is a knock on the door, and she assumes the party knocking are answering her ad for servants. The previous servants just vanished one night - "And were never seen again," says Kidman, not the least bit ominous. The new servants are Fionnula Flanagan, an old gardener, Eric Sykes, and a mute girl, Elaine Cassidy. (Odd side note: I just mentioned Flanagan in this blog.) 

Kidman explains to this new crew that there are 14 doors in this house, and each one must be locked before the next is opened. She has two children who are extremely photosensitive. If they are exposed to any light stronger than an oil lamp, they could die. So that explains a little bit about why she is so tightly wound. Also, her husband was a pilot in the war (Jersey was German occupied) and never came back. 

The kids are a young boy who sees ghosts and an older sister who likes to tell him ghost stories. Kidman is pretty strict with them, and feeds them lots of Bible stories. The kids are kind of over this, laughing at the story of children who refused to renounce Jesus and were martyred. They say they would just lie about it. When Kidman tries to tell them that is wicked, they agree and recant. They are, of course, lying.

Kidman begins to hear sounds, crying, stomping and so forth, even someone playing the piano. Since she keeps all the doors locked, she can't figure out what's going on. We hear the servants talk about some graves, and hiding them for now. But when Kidman demands the keys from them at shotgun-point and kicks them out, they decide to let her figure it out.

SPOILER - She, the kids, the servants, all ghosts, haunting the house. The ghosts she hears and the kids see are the new owners of the house, the living. But they won't be living there long, because the house is plainly haunted.

I enjoyed this a lot, although I kind of anticipated the twists (actually, I guessed several twists, but not all of them actually happened). Although Kidman's character wasn't very likable, when she starts storming through the house with her shotgun and rosary, well, it's pretty cool. Also, her husband shows up out of the fog, and he's Christopher Eccleston. He stays a night and vanishes again. But nobody seems to mind much or expect anything different.