The Others: Endings Matter

Judging by the excellent reviews The Others has gotten, I suspect I'm in the minority when it comes to my views on this movie. Fair warning, this review contains huge spoilers. I can't properly discuss my feelings toward The Others without talking about plot twists and the ending.

So, spoilers ahead. Turn back now if you haven't seen the movie yet and intend to.

All right, onto the review. My feelings through most of The Others were mixed. It had a lot of religious elements that I expected to go somewhere. I wondered if we were going into demon/exorcism territory, since there was such a strong focus on Catholicism. It didn't. All it really did was work into the character development of the main character, Grace. I'll get back to that in a little bit.

At first, I thought Grace would be my main complaint about the movie. I didn't find her character very likable. In fact, in the early scenes, I questioned the movie's description for making it sound like the servants were the creepy ones, because it seemed to me they were the normal ones suddenly stuck in an isolated house with this crazy lady.

Things changed, and my opinion changed with them.

Grace was clearly unstable and set in her ways (she tried to get into town to talk to the priest about her haunted house, failed, and then suddenly went back to not believing in the hauntings?), but my sympathy for her grew once the curtains were removed. Her dedication to protecting her children struck me, especially her anger when the servants suggested she expose the children to sunlight to see if they'd grown out of their illness. No, if the alternative to growing out of it is death, you don't just try and see!

Overall, I liked the mood and atmosphere of the movie. It had a certain ambiguity that might have been better handled if we didn't see the scenes of the two servants talking to one another about what was going on, but it still created a sense of uneasiness. I especially liked the fog, of course.

Welcome to Silent Hill?I never found the movie particularly scary, but it handled some creepy scenes very well. My absolute favorite was near the end, when Grace found the picture of the three servants--dead. The juxtaposition of that moment with Anne's discovery of the gravestones and then the sudden appearance of the three behind Nicholas was brilliant. My opinion of the movie skyrocketed at that point, because it was just so well-executed.

And then it went on to ruin it.

From reading other reviews, I get the impression people generally liked the final twist. I didn't. I hated it. And unlike Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright, The Others wasn't enjoyable enough to make me overlook the twist and still recommend it. Not only are the servants dead, but Grace and the two children are also dead. The incident no one wants to talk about is when she smothered them and then killed herself. The supposed ghosts disturbing them are actually the new owners of the house and a medium, trying to investigate the haunting.

It's an interesting twist on the usual sort of ghost story, I'll grant it that. I just didn't like it.

For one thing, is it supposed to have an anti-religion message? Instead of religion being used to fight ghosts, the most religious character is the woman who went crazy (why is never fully explained), killed her children, and committed suicide. Once she learns the truth, she doubts her beliefs and says she doesn't know if limbo exists. I really expected her to answer the question by saying they're in limbo (which wouldn't make sense, but it would have worked if Anne asked about purgatory instead), but instead she just says she doesn't know it exists.

Why was religion such a focal point in the first place? It meant nothing to the overall plot. I actually expected it to play a role in the scene when Grace asked her husband why he fought in a war that had nothing to do with him instead of staying with them. I thought that was the perfect parallel to Anne saying that she would have denied Christ so the Romans wouldn't kill her, and that the comparison would be brought up by someone in the movie. But no, it wasn't.

To me, the religious stuff seemed to have no purpose but to be denied in the end. If anyone else has another explanation, please let me know.

But aside from the dubious role of religion, I just didn't enjoy the twist. It took away from the impact the earlier (and much better) twist had and ended the movie on a dark, bittersweet note.

Also, why was it called The Others when the characters most often referred to them as "the intruders"?