It occurs to me only after reading this thread, but isn’t it possible she killed her kids and herself because she refused to collaborate with the Germans?
Instead of the three of them being hauled away and locked up, or shipped off to some camp or another, she wanted them all to die in thier own home. This also falls in with the bit about, “This is our house. We will never leave,” and the idea of refusing to compromise her beliefs/principles, no matter what.
As far as she knew, the Germans didn’t set foot in the house. They didn’t see the living through the whole flick, after all. Or possibly, with them all dead, there was no reason for the Germans to “occupy” the house.
I agree with Skeezix’ theory. The movie shows her character as being a very upright, very conservative, religious, control freak. My interpretation was that her faith had been shaken. You can tell she’d always lived her life as she was taught to live, and had always done what was proper. She got married and expected to have children and a perfectly respectable life after that. The children were born with this extremely rare disease that put them in constant danger of dying and altered everyone’s life to be in darkness. Then the war began, supplies were cut off, and her husband was taken from her (in the draft). She’s lost everything, so she grabs onto the only thing she still has control over, which is the house. As long as she can maintain a strict order over the house, she’s still in control and can manage.
Eventually, the strain was too much on her. (Maybe, as Skeezix suggests, it was under the threat of German occupation). I believe she had a Job-like crisis of faith moment, went insane, killed the children, and then in a fit of remorse killed herself.
One of the interesting things about the story is that they don’t spell it out, so the collaborationist theory isn’t any less plausible than any other one… It hadn’t even occurred to me.
I was really impressed with the movie, and it says a lot that it was released after The Sixth Sense, was advertised as being “a terrifying shocker in the vein of The Sixth Sense!!!” so you knew a big twist was coming up, and it still didn’t lose all its impact. (Even M. Night Shamalyan hasn’t been able to do that with his followup movies; once you know the big twist is coming the whole movie falls apart.)
Another theory is that Grace became so enraged after improperly using bold tags that she killed her children and herself. So many interpretations. So much ineptitude.
No, I haven’t. I friend of mine (also a big fan of the first movie) saw it in the theatre and hated it. I trust his opinion enough that I never bothered. Maybe if it shows up on cable one day…
It’s interesting Cervaise mentioned a couple of Japanese movies, The Ring and Cure. I was just thinking that Asia has been turning out some very chilling movies recently. Along with the 2 above, it’s also worth tracking down Pulse (also by Kiyoshi Kurosawa), The Eye, and Audition, a charming and quirky romantic comedy that takes a rather dark turn towards the end. Definitely not for the faint of heart.
I struggled through the book, myself. Part of my problem was wading through the language as well as the fact that the perspective of the narrator keeps changing so it was often difficult to determine who was speaking.
Actually, I think they were chanting “This house is ours” over and over. Their voices are almost a whisper. I don’t think it was a control issue over the kids at this point. If you watch it again, remember that they are the ghosts haunting the house. If you moved into a stereotypical haunted house (think Amityville Horror), it would be right in line to hear whispering voices say “This house is ours…”
The kids are actually happy at the end. They realize they are free from the dark prison of their disease (real or imagined). Grace, although her belief system is totally shattered, is still in her house, with her children (whom I feel she loved, even though it was misguided at times), so she’s not that bad off either.
I also thought Blair Witch rocked, but the second one just didn’t cut it.
(Spoiler for the Sixth Sense in my post)
Hmm. Having seen The Sixth Sense, the twist in The Others didn’t surprise me at all. Somewhere halfway through the movie, I thought, “Waitaminnit…Grace and her kids are the ghosts, right?” And so for the rest of the movie, I was aware that the director was trying (and failing) to pull a switcheroo on me. It lessened the impact.
It was still very stylish, very well-acted, very good. But a badly-accomplished surprise hurts a movie a lot for me.
I’m glad to have Stephen King’s language for talking about horror movies: previously, I’d referred to the moment of Boo! as the money shot. Some of my favorite horror, such as many Joyce Carol Oates short stories, never lets the cat out of the bag.
There’s one horror movie that lets the cat out of the bag to incredibly good effect: the French version of The Vanishing. It contains, IMO, the scariest thirty seconds of celluloid anywhere.
A horror director must be, above all things, patient. I don’t go to horror movies to be freaked when the medium opens the cabinet door, say; I go for the moments leading up to that, when the daughter shows her drawings of the people, when the piano plays, etc. Like in The Shining, my ultimate creep-out movie, I’m changing the channel right when I see Danny pedaling his Big Wheel down the hallway because I know exactly what’s waiting down there.
I loved the first Blair Witch movie. The second one was okay, but it is nothing like the first. It’s not as scary, but has a few ewww moments.
I live out in a wooded area, and sometimes I get freaked out going out at night because of the first one. I’ve never had a movie affect me like that.
I also thought that after seeing the movie and that interpretation is just as valid (especially when you consider that it was Nazi policy to “euthanize” those who had congenital illnesses like the childen’s). Who knows? Maybe that element of story was in an earlier draft of the script.
If you listen to Grace’s description of the event at the end of the movie, she makes it sound as if it were an act of insanity, and not some defiant murder/suicide.
Actually, I would go much farther: The Others would have been a fine film if it had been released before tSS. As it was, I knew the twist in the opening scene, where she wakes up screaming. I immediately thought, “Oh, she’s dead. OK.” After that, the movie was creepy but never really scary for me.
Incidentally, my favorite horror movie, “The Thing”, is pretty scary and it shows, in pretty graphic detail, the scary bits. But the tension is palpable. Back then, Carpenter was a master at building tension.
Same here. I had the “twist” figured within 10 minutes, and spent the rest of the movie seeing if they screwed up anywhere. Which, to the filmmakers’ credit, they never did. It’s a well-made film, but I was never really scared by it.
Carpenter’s The Thing is also my favorite horror movie (which proves you have taste, BA ;)), and here’s why: It combines, very effectively, both sides of the “show or not show?” question.
Think about it: The movie is very explicit about what the creature can turn into and do when it’s unleashed. However, because it takes time to gestate after it infects somebody, it’s impossible to know where exactly it is — indeed, who it is — until it’s too late. And then, once it’s finally revealed, it doesn’t look the same at all, from incarnation to incarnation.
So The Thing gets the best of both approaches: While you clearly see the — or, rather, a — beastie, you simultaneously never know where it is, when it’s going to turn up, or what it’s going to look like or be capable of when it does.
I’m another big fan of The Thing (both versions, actually). The Carpenter film was one of the very first movies I ever bought on DVD.
I like your analysis, Cervaise, and it occurs to me that the same could be applied to another great horror film of a few years earlier, Alien. The various stages in its life-cycle keep the audience off-balance and, in a way, the director reveals less as the movie progresses. Note that the audience gets a chance to very thoroughly examine the egg sacks and face-hugger along with the characters in the film. The shocking chest-burster scene gives the audience a quick glimpse of the alien in the tadpole stage before it tears off into the bowels of the ship. From then on the alien recedes into the shadows as it grows bigger and looms larger in the imagination.