I just finished watching this movie tonight. It was really good, I have to say. Anyway…I understand most of what happened, but I have a few questions.
Was it basically that they were all living in the house at the same time- Grace and her kids, and the “intruders” (Victor and his family and all), and they all only caught a few glimpses of one another? Or was it that Victor and co lived in the future and were doing that seance thing to try and conjure up the ghosts of Grace and the children? Or is it just up to the viewer?
Also, did the husband come back as a ghost, too? And what did Grace do that was so terrible- was it the murders? Are they just constantly sort of replaying over and over again?
Finally, why did she do it? Was it out of grief for her husband dying? Did it just drive her mad?
1-They lived in the house at the same time, just catching glimpses of each other.
2-The husband was a ghost. The horrible thing Grace did was kill the children, yes.
3-She did kill them out of grief. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I think she had a history of being a bit uh…unstable, and when her husband died, she snapped.
Oh okay. Thanks, both pepperlandgirl and rastahomie. Perhaps it was a combination of both…after all, living in such unnatural circumstances, and having to grieve, are both factors that could have contributed to her insanity.
They were living (hah!) in the house at the same time, though the old lady was there to try and get in touch with Grace and the kids. Presumably called in because some ghost kept pulling the curtains closed.
Did anyone else think this movie would have been even cooler if the dad had in fact left to fight in the first World War, and that the house had been sitting empty (except for ghosts) until the end of WWII? Everyone I saw it with thought that would have been a nice twist.
I just saw this movie last night too. I was wondering about the Dad. He died at the front and made his way home in spirit to say goodbye to his family. Did he expect them to be dead? Why’d he lay in bed for two days? Anne told him that Grace killed them? How could she have known her mother killed her if she didn’t know she was dead? Why would Grace see the medium instead of her daughter in the veil?
That’s a lot of questions. I loved this movie. It scared me just like a good ghost story should.
Anne didn’t know she was dead, but she and her brother did know that their mother had “gone mad” one night and tried to kill them. They referred to this throughout the movie. The poor kids just didn’t know Grace had been successful.
It would have been cooller if the father had fought in WWI, Lamia…but then we get to miss Grace’s wonderful commentary on how daddy fought for the “goodies” and how of course everyone who died on the right side went to heaven. It just seemed more fitting for the conversation to take place in reference to WWII, IMHO.
When Grace sees the old woman instead of Anne, I just figured it was her going a bit crazy due to all of her daughter’s talk about ghosts. And then later on they find out who she really is.
Right before Victor’s family moved out, Victor’s mother said Anne had “posessed” the medium. I took it to explain that was what had happened when Nicole Kidman saw her little girl as the old woman. Also, the older housekeeper said, living people would come and go in the house, some they would sense but most they would not. She also said something about sometimes the world of the living and the dead connect. I really liked this movie, very creepy, very well executed. I was a little disappointed that the twist ending was exactly what I thought it would be all along, but then what else could it be and still be a good movie.
This is weird. I watched this movie last night as well. Do we all go to the same Blockbuster?
Unlike the rest of the board, I thought this movie was awful. Too much whispering, too predictable, no scenes that made me jump out of my seat. Perhaps I need to watch The Innocents, but I’m not sure I want to kill another 2 hours of my life just to better understand “The Others”.
Consider how confused Grace and the children were about what they were experiencing. One of the things I really liked about the movie was the way the spirit world and its interface with the material world were portrayed. Things were confused and mysterious. Grace’s family had the servants to help them make the transition and understand what was going on, but her husband would have been wandering amongst other shattered, lost souls, trying to find his way home from the chaos of the Front. And he couldn’t get home, not, until Grace came out, and happened to find him.
By the way, notice how the characters’ afflictions turn out to be references to how they died? Grace has terrible headaches (she shot herself in the head), while the children hyperventilate when frightened (they were smothered).
One thing I never understood, or perhaps we weren’t meant to - was whether they were experiencing Purgatory? Did they realise, and know they weren’t ever going to Heaven? They made such a big deal of “dying and going to heaven” earlier in the movie - I thought it was interesting.
For the love of Jeebus, there’s SPOILERS below, so beware: Max , I was thinking the same thing. I watched this for the first time the night before last. I actually searched for threads about it yesterday.
One of the things I was wondering was how many people were not surprised by the ending? For some reason, the idea that they were already dead popped into my head right at the beginning of the show. Her issue with the postman having never showed was the biggest clue to me. I have to admit it kept me from enjoying the show as much since I kept half-expecting Bruce Willis to run across the camera at any moment.
**nefertari - ** Not sure if they were in what was Grace’s idea of purgatory. She made a comment to her daughter to the effect of, “I am no wiser than you are”. (exact quote, anyone?) My interpretation was that she realized at the end that she may have been wrong in her own beliefs concerning the afterlife.
**Walloon - ** good call. I hadn’t even thought of that.
I wasn’t surprised. I had the ending pegged about twenty minutes in, I think. It seemed pretty obvious to me, in the same way the the conclusion of Sixth Sense seems obvious once you know what it is… though I thought that Sixth Sense did a better job of masking it (I had been told the ending of SS beforehand, by a loud, rude bus passenger, so I don’t know if I would have picked up on it early or not).
That said, I still enjoyed The Others. I thought it was well-structured, established a great mood throughout, and came together nicely. A nice surprise to me was Nicole Kidman. I’ve never really liked her in any role I’ve seen her in, but she was actually quite good in this. I’m not sure why, but I think I saw her actually act for the first time in this film.
