Great ending -- if you make it that far

Rating: Null/10 (1 March 2003)

How many times have you said `That would have been a great movie, but the ending ruined it'? Well, THE OTHERS left me feeling just the opposite. The ending is a truly unexpected twist on the classic haunted house story. If only I hadn't had to suffer through such a tedious movie to get there.
To be fair, the intention was good -- to make an artistic horror movie. But I had the same problem with THE OTHERS that I had with several other such artistic horror movies, such as THE HUNGER and THE SHINING. There seems to be an underlying assumption that horror can't be truly artistic, so that the only way to make a truly artistic horror movie is to subordinate the horror elements to the artistic ones. The result is a movie that doesn't scare you and does suggest there's something wrong with you if you actually like horror. A truly artistic horror movie is made by someone who loves and respect the genre, and so wants to create the best example of it that they know how.