The best horror movie in a generation

Rating: 10/10 (25 November 2001)

A big claim? Well yes and no. Firstly I should define what I DON'T mean by horror - men in rubber suits or teenagers with outsized cutlery. If these movies were ever scary it was in the early 1980s when 'Alien' and 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' defined those particular genres to such an extent that no one has ever matched their standard.
What I consider horror is something much more subtle and far older - the fears that we all carry inside of us whether we admit it or not.
The terror of death; the ache of loneliness; the fear of a believer that there might not be a God, the worry of the most convinced atheist that there may well be one; the committed rationalist who outwardly denies the unknowable; the constant temptation of evil - those have been the staples of horror from the dawn of time and they still have the power to influence us.

Who hasn't lain awake in the small hours with their heart pounding?

Has anyone not glanced behind them when walking down a lonely country road?

Is there anyone who can honestly say that they haven't thought of doing something that they know to be wrong - just for the sake of it?
Unfortunately these ideas have been out of fashion for a long time. No one has come close to the superb horror of Robert Wise's 'The Haunting' which made a terrifying movie out of banging on the walls and a shaky staircase. Perhaps it is only 'The Blair Witch Project' that has recently attempted a minimalist approach to horror, but that film could not hope to live up to its advance hype and consequently was something of a disappointment. Fortunately 'The Others' arrived in the UK with mercifully little hype and is something of an unknown quantity.
'The Others' takes the staples of a traditional ghost story from the pen of M.R. James and most particularly from Henry James' 'The Turn of the Screw' and produces something that manages to be very familiar and at the same time wholly original. The opening is a wholly discordant voice from childhood radio 'Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.'
It is the end of 1945, the war in Europe has ground to a halt and a world where the living and the dead are intertwined is trying to recover from the devastation. A young family is trying to settle into a large old house, unsure if the soldier father is alive or dead. The opening shot follows Grace (Nichole Kidman) as she walks to answer the front door. There she finds three servants looking for positions in the rambling house. Apparently the previous household staff had got up and left the house without rhyme or reason, Grace escorts the three through the house, insisting with fragile urgency that they always remember to lock doors after them.
She offers to introduce her children Anne and Nicholas to the new housekeeper, Mrs. Mills. This is the first of many deeply unsettling moments. The curtains *MUST* be draw and lamps lit. Grace disappears into the children's bedroom and wakes them; what monstrous things are going to emerge? The suspense is drawn out until breaking point and then Grace reappears with two angelic looking children. not for the last time the movie throws you off your balance. The children suffer from a form of acute photosensitivity preventing them ever experiencing daylight, hence the locked doors and shuttered windows.
These are the simple props used to support everything that follows.

People and a place on the edge of reality begin to slip into another world entirely. Doors open and close of their own accord, the protective curtains are thrown open, furniture moves, a piano plays in the middle of the night and Anne claims to have seen other people in the house. Throughout, Grace tries to reconcile events with her own deeply-held Catholicism, a terrifying construct where Hell and Purgatory are very close at hand. It is this belief that comes under attack, gradually at first, but as the movie progresses, her world begins to crumble. With control always shifting towards the increasingly sinister Mrs. Mills.
A slight tale to be sure, but then the best horror stories only provide a skeleton (real or metaphorical) for our own fears.
The house is just as much a character as the human beings that live in within; it appears to be adrift from the rest of the World. There might well be a world beyond the massive wall but equally there might be nothing at all. With the curtains constantly drawn the house is filled with a perpetual twilight, but even those times when we are able to glimpse through the windows there is precious little to see with an unchanging grey fog shrouding the autumn countryside.
The movie reeks of death; there is persistent question of whether father is alive or dead; the belongings of departed former occupants are covered by shroud-like dust sheets, antique photographs of unknown people (including a particularly macabre photograph album) look out from shelves, whilst the garden is covered with autumnal leaves. Mortality is a presence in the house, even the hope of an afterlife is coloured by Grace's firm belief in the fate awaiting sinners and the less penitent.
Nicole Kidman is as pale, brittle and delicate as porcelain in the role of Grace. As her grasp on the control of the house slips with ever-increasing speed, her world begins to falter and it is entirely possible that Grace will shatter under the pressure. She believes in a loving God yet he appears to shun her when she needs him most, whilst the fight against evil appears to have robbed Grace of her husband. Outwardly she tries to maintain the restrained chill expected of an upper-class woman in the 1940s, yet inwardly this is a loving mother and distraught wife, desperate for some form of emotional support.
The children are central to the film - there is none of the preternatural adulthood offered by Haley Joel Osment, these are very real children. Nicholas (James Bentley) is at the age where he is still
trusting of everyone and tied firmly to his mother, a very real innocent. Anne (Alakina Bentley) is older, just at the stage where she is starting to show independence and at an age where children are capable of very real cruelty. Much of the narrative is driven by Anne's interactions with the remainder of the cast, and Bentley proves more than adequate for the task, sometimes frighteningly adult, at other times a helpless child.
The servants are characters from the pages of Dickensian fiction, the slightest of the roles is Lydia (Elaine Cassidy) a disconcerting mute who clearly knows something about the house's past, but cannot, or will not let on. Eric Sykes plays Mr Tuttle the gardener and manages to cast off a long history of comedy roles to give a subtle, almost otherwordly performance. However it is Fionnula Flanaghan's Mrs Mills who provides the counterweight to Grace. She gradually unveils herself as the movie progresses, starting off as the sweet-smiling, efficient servant, but slowly transforming into the centre of power in the house; threatening, all-knowing and truly terrifying. Mrs. Mills is a worthy successor to Judith Anderson's legendary Mrs. Danvers from Daphne du Maurier's 'Rebecca'.
Extraordinarily, this very British movie is directed by Spanard - Alejandro Amenabar who has redefined the genre with complete mastery much like Ang Lee's take on 'Sense and Sensibility'.
'The Others' is an astonishingly beautifully made movie. Each scene is set and lit like an oil painting. Shadows and the darkness play just as important a role as the warm glow from oil lamps and the fires. Daylight where it is allowed to intrude is a frigid blue-white colour, bleaching life and colour from everything it touches.
Sound plays an important part in telling the story, there are plenty of minor chords and shrieking strings to set your nerves on edge, but it is the quiet that is the most memorable. Entire scenes are played out in near silence serving to heighten the almost unbearable tension of the latter part of the movie.
So is the movie scary? Undoubtedly yes, the pacing is perfect with enough false climaxes and unexpected shocks to keep even the most demanding horror fan happy. It takes its time to set up all of the pieces, but as the whole story is put into place, the screw is gradually being tightened. Situations becomes increasingly claustrophobic, Grace's nerve falters and Mrs. Mills appears to feed on her weakness - where is it leading?

Fortunately the end of the story is extremely satisfying and comes quite unexpectedly. In retrospect, or on a second viewing you will see all of the clues to the solution littered through the narrative, but none are so obvious that you will put the whole thing together until the director is ready for you.
Oh and I didn't sit comfortably at all.