Twists and turns! WARNING: SPOILER!

Rating: 9/10 (15 November 2002)

I'm such a wimp when it comes to horror movies. I was 8 when I saw Poltergeist and I have been deathly afraid of clowns and under the bed ever since. (Even though I'm 14) So, seeing this movie was extremely frightening for me! In it we follow this depressed woman who has lost her husband in the war. She lives in her dark secluded mansion with her 2 children, who can't be near the light because if they are exposed to it they will die. So, the movie is all dark, which is freaky. In the movie Grace Stewart (the mother) played by Nicole Kidman is slowly going insane and she has hired some new servants to replace her old ones, who just disappeared one day! Grace is noticing all these strange things happening in her house and she suspects Natzis are hiding in it, though soon the suspicion turns to ghosts because of the freaky pale faced daughter, who can see one of them. The servants know what's up, though they are acting like they don't. Then, Grace begins investigating all of this, and looks at old books and tries to find out if the house has a bad history. She even finds a book of the dead, which has pictures of dead people in it, all dressed up. grace gets really freaked out, and tries to walk into town to get help from the church, but during her walk, fog surrounds her and she finds her husband! She takes him home, and he's all depressed, and doesn't seem to know what's happening, though again the servants do. The children are absolutely ecstatic to have their daddy home, but then begin telling him terrible things that their mommy has done to them. Because, children, mommy went crazy! So, the next day the father disappears, and more terrible things start to happen. Grace knows the servants know something so she sends them away because she thinks they are evil. Then, that night, while looking through the book of the dead, she sees that the SERVANTS are in there!!!! They were ghosts. Her children, who have snuck outside, have just realized this because they see their gravestones in the yard! And the servants are creepily following them! So the kids run inside to their mothers arms, and Grace tells them to hide upstairs, while she tries to stop the 3 ghosts. But, while upstairs, hiding in the closet, the kids notice that there are even more ghosts there! And then you see this horrific old woman's face open the closet! Meanwhile, downstairs, the ghosts are telling Grace that they just want to help. She runs upstairs into the room where her kids are hiding, and sees a group of people at a table. The old woman is writing some stuff very fast, and the kids are telling her what their mother did to them! Grace screams, and takes all the papers and throws them in the air and destroys them. Suddenly, the scene changes and we see it from the other people's point of view! The papers are flying up by themself, and they are trying to reach the ghosts that live in the house! So, now we find out that Grace and her children, and the servants, and the lost soul of the father are ALL ghosts! Apparently, one day while they were alive, Grace went crazy and suffocated her children with pillows and shot herself in the head. It appeared to Grace and the children that they had survived and that God had given them a second chance! But, sadly, that was not the case. They were ghosts. It ends up with the servants telling Grace that they didn't know they were dead either, and wanted to break it gently to her. They also say that once in a while they will make contact with the other world, but only sometimes. They decide to stay at the house, especially since now the children can be exposed to light, (because they're already dead) It really made you think and it was a great horror movie. All great movies make you think, not like Scream or I Know What You Did Last Summer, both of which are terribly predictable. There are so many twists and turns in this movie, and it was really freaky in the theatre! Go see it, or if you have, watch it again! Out of 5 stars: 4