The Others

‘The Others’ is set in Britain which is always nice to see. It’s about a woman and her kids living in an old house with history about it. The daughter starts to see a small boy around the house and the mother is convinced that it’s not true. However the woman (Grace) hears strange things going on like the piano being used when there’s no one visible she can see. She thinks it’s something unholy and needs the house to be blessed in order to get rid of it. The daughter however starts to scare her brother with this unknown small boy called victor. The three servants that enter the house at the start of movie, to me seemed suspicious. We find out that both children cannot be exposed to light, only weak light such as candles thus they must live in complete darkness for the rest of their lives. However the old woman (one of the three servants) says to grace that if you don’t expose them to it ever, then you’ll never know it’s cured or not. I couldn’t help but think this was used in a way of purposely putting the children in more danger. The kid’s sort of question Grace’s beliefs at the start of the movie, Grace doesn’t believe that ghosts exist etc and she doesn’t like the fact that her kids think they could exist. Grace then starts to think ghosts could be around and tries to find the graves of people that previously lived in the house, but the servants cover the graves up. That scene however is done in the way of they are purposely doing or that it was a mistake.

The servants become more and more suspicious all the way through. The curtains in covering all the windows in the house however are one day removed but the thing is the old woman servant says that, that is what might happen proving to Grace they can’t be trusted and thus kicking them out of the house. There is a part of the film where Grace finds a photo of people who previously lived in the house but died, the three people appearing on it are the three servants. At which point you think okay they are ghosts then, but if they are how can Grace and the two children see them? The children however run away at one point to find their father who at one point was with them when Grace found him in the middle of the woods trying to get the house blessed by the priest. The father however seems dead from the start, he doesn’t hardly or even say anything at all as far as I recall which I was weary of at first. Whilst in the woods the kids are confronted by the servants at which ultimately proves there’s something wrong with them. The start chasing the children back to house, what I found hilarious about all this is that Grace every time throughout the movie is constantly using a shot gun as protection, but that is only because she doesn’t believe that they are ghosts and that only find out right at the end that they are ghosts themselves as the children discover there’s a group of people in the house acting as mediums to get answers from the ghosts inside the house which is Grace and the two children.

In the end everything is just to find out that they killed themselves and the purpose of the servants is to tell them this and realise they are the ghosts. It’s kind of weird however; I’m a believer in ghosts myself and feel like what it would be to be a ghost. They’ve put in a perspective of humans and ghosts cannot see each other and basically both are scared of one another. It’s quite cleaver I think and it ends by the daughter standing by the window watching the family that is there move out and being exposed to the light which isn’t effecting the children at all. It’s odd when in the past I’ve seen these types of creepy things happen on TV etc like séances and it puts in into a way of how one may think it’s being conducted as the children whisper into their ears telling those reasons why they are here and answering questions...  I’d never try a séance however...