Saw it yesterday. I'm not terribly impressed. Pretty stylish early on. I loved Fionnula Flanagan, the Irish actress playing the nanny. The kids were really good. Part of the problem might be that I figured it out *way* too early. And I'm not even that bright.

I did like the wind-up. But there were a lot of dull stretches, particularly because a lot of the suspense was missing for me. Unlike The Sixth Sense, it was obvious throughout the movie that there was a *huge* missing puzzle piece waiting to be plopped onto the table. But when there's only one Sixth Sense-shaped hole in the picture, well, I'm just sitting around waiting for them state the obvious.

It's no Session 9, which gets better and better the more I think about it.

-Tom

The ending didn't occur to me until it was revealed. For me, the scene where what's going on is revealed was like a punch line. I enjoyed it. Maybe it's because I don't see horror flicks all that much. Having grown up with slasher-like horror (Halloween, Friday the 13th, etc.), I don't expect much from horror films, but this was more thriller and so I found that refreshing.

I saw it last Sunday. I guessed the ending somewhat (somebody's gotta be dead here!). I'm with Chick, parts of it were boring. But it wasn't bad. Good acting all around, good shooting, but slow.

BTW, what did you think of the husband? Was he dead? was he alive? or was he an angel from heaven? the husbands role is key to the "morals" in the movie i think.

Also, Kidman was pretty hot in the movie. yeah! love dem redheads!

etc

Since this thread is all about spoilers....

"BTW, what did you think of the husband? Was he dead? was he alive? or was he an angel from heaven? the husbands role is key to the "morals" in the movie i think."

Well it's 1946 and the husband says he has to go back to fighting the war...

I'm still flabbergasted that I didn't guess the ending. It just never occured to me that, to ghosts, the living would be like... ghosts. That totally threw me off from what I admit is an obvious twist (really the only one that makes sense). Yes, the movie can be dull but I still enjoyed the sheer rich... oddness... throughout. The way it twisted a lot of conventions on their head. "Keep it dark" "Lock the doors" "Are the servants acting MORE scary than Kidman? Or is it the other way around?"

What I find most interesting about the film is the religious tone. Is there an afterlife? Yes, but you get to stay at home and get haunted by the living. (Or you have to, presumably) keep fighting WWII forever.

re: Kidman, I can't think of a more suited role for the woman.

Oh, at the end of the movie some kid behind me stood up and shouted in a pitch perfect imitation of one of the movie's children: "Mummy, this movie sucked"

Ah, Milwaukee.
-Andrew

Oh, I also found the scene where they rip open all the curtains, and show a remarkably detailed and pretty home, to be effective. And the one where there are no curtains even moreso.

Beautiful camera work and direction throughout. Scary piano too. --shudder-- pianos.

-Andrew

RE: turning convention on its ear. Yep, I agree. Since I didn't get it until it was revealed, some of the convention twists didn't occur to me until a little later. But that just makes them all the more enjoyable. For instance, Bub's paino commnet reminds me of the Kidman ghost being knocked to her rump by the invisible person operating the door. Heh. Nice stuff.

"Part of the problem might be that I figured it out *way* too early. And I'm not even that bright.

I did like the wind-up. But there were a lot of dull stretches, particularly because a lot of the suspense was missing for me. Unlike The Sixth Sense, it was obvious throughout the movie that there was a *huge* missing puzzle piece waiting to be plopped onto the table."

Hmm, that was the problem my wife and I had with The Sixth Sense. We both figured out in Willis' first scene after the shooting. We looked at each other and said the kid's Mom isn't reacting to his presence. He must be dead.

I had a problem with internal consistency in The Others, which was sporadic. The dead and the living only *occasionally* sense each other. Such as when it's convenient for the plot.

For instance, the scene when Nicole Kidman hears the piano. It's a standard ghost story sequence, with the ghost playing the piano whenever the human isn't in the room. Of course, we later find out it's the living human playing the piano. So here's what really happened: She, as a ghost, hears the music, dashes into the room, closes the lid on the paino, and locks it. Then he, as a living guy -- being haunted by a ghost, mind you -- unlocks the lid that mysteriously closed and begins playing again the moment she leaves the room? Who does that? 'Oh, look, the piano mysteriously locked itself...let me unlock it and continue playing again once the door closes." Bah. That was there just to toy with the audience. Like the Poltergeist rip-off in The Sixth Sense, when the cupboards are suddenly open without the camera cutting away. Cheap movie tricks that don't jibe with the fiction.

As for the husband coming home, I really liked that part. That was, IMO, the strongest sequence and had the most haunting repercussions. He's a ghost roaming the battlefields of WWII who has to come home and find out why his wife murdered their children. I've always liked Christopher Ecceleston (I recently watched Shallow Grave again) and I wish The Others had focused more on that situation.

-Tom

I too liked the implications more than the film, particularly w/r/t the husband. Don't get me wrong, I liked the film plenty, but was constantly aware that I was being had and kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. I don't know that this is the film's fault, necessarily, or just a byproduct of where we are in film history. I do think that given where we are right now, pulling off a "secret" twist at the end of a film like this is a feat because just about everybody has their antennae up to pick up the early signals.

The implications about the husband going back to the front was what stayed with me, and frankly haunted me (ahem) afterward. His appearance was what we talked about the most too as we tried to figure out the rules of the world of The Others. My wife thought that the fog scene suggested that the dead were confined to the area in which they died, and if this was so how did the husband wander home? Did the husband know he was dead?

None of that really mattered so much to me, as I was more caught up with the image of him returning to the front, where so many other dead must also be. I just kept coming back to that, to the idea of hordes of battlefield dead, some unaware that they were even dead, still caught up in the horrors of the war.

I also thought the casting was spot on, and I agree with Andrew about the religious tone, or undertone. That was a nice touch, especially when the little girl has her outburst about having to believe some of the silly things she's read in the Bible.

However, my favorite part of the movie, hands down, was when it was revealed that Tom and mtkafka had the same reaction to it. That was a great reveal. I always knew they were kindred spirits.

-Amanpour

"They poo on our windows."

My wife brought up the piano thing too Tom. Now, this is what I told her (I'm aware that it's lame):

Time seems screwed up in the film. Or at least the main character's perception of it seems to be. When did the new family move in? 5-7 days after a murder suicide? I doubt that. How long did they stay before the seance at the end? Only the boy saw things?

Since the living and the dead seem out of synch, completely (as the maid put it "sometimes we notice the others"), one wonders if Kidman was really closing curtains and locking doors at all. Or if she was in some dead universe that only occasionally intersects with reality (cue theme from Tales of the Darkside)

Also, the old woman is sighted (pun not intended) by the girl for days before the end of the film. She doesn't seem to be part of the family... seems she'd only be there for that seance at the end, doesn't it?

Unless, conveniently, this little family (which bought a mansion a week after a murder/suicide) also has a blind gramma who happens to be a medium.

So, my *lame* theory is that Kidman and kiddies are perceiving time and reality differently. That piano scene could have lasted a few nights, rather than the minute or so it looked.

Yeah, I know... anyway, the piano scene scared the shit out of me.

-Andrew

>I just kept coming back to that, to the idea of hordes of battlefield dead, some unaware that they were even dead, still caught up in the horrors of the war.

Yeah, that was the best bit in the movie, and was made even more moving because the husband spent most of his time sleeping or in the bedroom, as if he was getting one last bit of rest before trodding off to fight for eternity.

--Billy

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