There’s this story that Alfred Hitchcock told to French New Wave director Francois Truffaut about the difference between a suspenseful film scene and a surprising one. If an audience were to see two men sitting at a table that suddenly exploded, Hitchcock said, they would be completely surprised. If, however, the same audience knew prior to the explosion that the bomb was under the table, their minds would be caught up in the question of whether the characters would live or die and thus achieve a higher level of suspense. The simple difference is in the ability to milk an involuntary human response from the audience’s tendency to empathize and care about the fates of the fictional characters on screen. This story parallels the difference between intelligent horror movies and those that rely primarily on cheap thrills.
Alejandro Amenabar’s The Others is the former?psychologically chilling and deliberate. It is a shining gem of restraint and technique in a summer season full of overblown special effects and movies that are more rapid ear-shattering sensual events than they are films. The story concerns Grace (Nicole Kidman), a tightly wound, strict British Catholic mother of two, who resides on the Isle of Jersey in the dusk of WWII. Her husband away at war, Grace must care for the children and her large Victorian home with only the aid of servants who eventually desert her. New servants suddenly show up at the door, possessing an uncanny knowledge of the mansion, which soon appears to be more than just any old mansion.
Movies that fall under the haunted house sub-genre, seem to be the most simultaneously intelligent and frightening horror movies around. The Haunting (not the remake), The Shining and even The Exorcist to some extent, are all tales of houses that harbor something not of this world. These films, as opposed to such recent popular favorites as the not-at-all-scary Scream trilogy, all succeed through their knowledge of what fears all humans share, the dark, the monsters under the bed and those strange noises at night. All slowly paced, they refuse to reveal outright the monster or ghost. Instead, these films work off the limitless ability of the human mind to produce the scariest thing imaginable, operating as a sort of joint effort between the filmmaker and ourselves.
Amenbar borrows some devices from these films, but distinguishes The Others with one particularly interesting twist. It just so happens that Grace’s children are photosensitive, meaning they cannot be exposed to sunlight, lest they suffer from a severe allergic reaction. Because of this, every curtain in the house must be closed and every one of the 50 doors shut and locked, creating an even darker and creepy atmosphere than most haunted house films achieve. What makes this situation unique though, is not the added tension due to the darkness, but rather the new fear of light, normally a comforting and safe haven from the dangers of the dark.
The majority of scenes in The Others take place under candlelight, swaddling the film in layering shades of black and gray. As a result, the characters assume the hushed tones of their surroundings. Between this veil of shadows on the inside and the fog enshrouded exterior force, Amenbar forces the audience to focus their attention single-mindedly on Grace’s family and their dilemma. It imposes upon us a smothering sense of claustrophobia and impending dread.
Still, there are some significant weaknesses in an otherwise solid film, such as the laughable dialogue of some of the supporting cast, evocative of the less threatening lines of awful James Bond villains. Moreover, the tone, which at times, is just too damned slow, might turn many viewers away. Having rejected the school of the quick cut, action packed sequence proliferating throughout Hollywood today, the film moves at a sedate pace. Amenabar seems to say with his film, “I am going to make this movie really seep into your bones and chill you from the inside. It’s going to take a while, but be patient because it is worth it.” And it is. It capitalizes on the fact that even the greatest filmmaker could never conjure up anything more frightening than what we produce in our mind’s eyes. The best horror films are aware of this and smartly hold back on showing us the “Big Bad Thing.” The slow tempo of The Others is one of its greatest strengths as the lack of a constant barrage of images allows the audience to fill in the dark blanks of the house’s hallways with their own fear. The good haunted house movie is not composed solely of those leap-from-your-seat moments (although there are one or two present here), but rather of the slow realization that things are not as they should be.
The highly publicized twist ending is said to be derivative of another recent film, which is itself derivative of previous films. But everything is derivative of everything else, so it doesn’t really pose a problem. Regardless, The Others stands out from this summer’s glut of sequels and remakes to offer a new variation on an old theme. Go see it, but do so with the understanding that only patience will result in a rewarding movie-going experience.
