the others storyline
The story of the movie "The Others" centers around a woman living in a large house with her son and daughter. They stay in complete darkness inside the house because her two children are extremely sensitive to light. Her daughter sees things and people that no one else can see. The story becomes mysterious and exciting as the mother gradually starts to sense what her daughter sees, but without concrete evidence. Over time, the story begins to unfold, allowing the mother to discover the full truth. In the end, the movie delivers a surprising twist.
The movie is considered one of the horror and mystery films, despite lacking very scary scenes. The horror lies in the unknown that you do not see, and this is what makes the movie powerful in my opinion, as the story remains mysterious until the very last moments, which keeps you eager to uncover the mystery.
The Others delivers a wonderful performance from its heroine Nicole Kidman and the two children, adding a lot to its story. It deserves high praise, especially since most scenes were filmed with weak lighting, which emphasizes the faces and makes the emotions very clear.
The Others movie events
One of the strangest beginnings I've ever seen in my life: the film opens with a mother screaming while sleeping in her bed. She then gets up, turns around, looks at her watch, and sighs with relief, as if she had a very disturbing dream.
The doorbell rings, and Grace (Nicole Kidman) opens the door to find three people—two women and a man. She asks them to come in, assuming they are servants who came to work at the house since she had recently requested help. They enter, quickly get to know each other, and she begins to introduce them to her customs, her children, and the most important rules they must follow in the house.
She shows them where they will sleep and then takes the two women to meet her children, Nicholas and Anne. She also informs them that the children are sensitive to light and emphasizes the need to keep the curtains drawn and the doors closed when moving from one room to another. Finally, she orders them to begin their work in the house.
One of the two women started making breakfast for the children when she heard the girl saying to her, “Are you going to leave us like the others did?” and also saying that their mother had gone crazy. Her brother shouted at her that this did not happen, when Grace entered and asked the lady to go out with her. Then she told her that the advertisement for the servants had not been published, so how did they come here to work?
The lady told her they came by chance because a large place like this house needs servants. She also mentioned that she knows the area well because she used to work there years ago. Grace was convinced, which led her to say that her children sometimes have strange thoughts and that they shouldn’t pay attention to their unusual talk.
The terrifying events started when Grace was helping the two children with their studies and teaching them never to lie. She separated them and placed each one in a different room to study alone. She was in the house hall when she heard a child crying. She quickly went to Nicholas's room but didn't see anything. Then she rushed to Anne's room and found it empty as well.
She confronted Anne, telling her she heard the crying and was sure she wasn't imagining it. Anne then said that the crying was Victor's, and she asked who Victor was. Anne explained that he was a spoiled child who had been there a minute ago with his family. Grace told her to be quiet and not tell lies and asked where Victor was now. Anne pointed to the last place she saw him, and Grace found an open door, which surprised her.
Grace thought the servants had done it and had forgotten her orders not to leave the door open, so she brought the two ladies and scolded them severely. Although they denied it, they eventually gave in to her rebuke.
Victor kept appearing in the house, and the only one who saw him was the little girl, Anne. Her mother, Grace, didn’t believe her and decided to punish her by keeping her alone until she learned never to lie. Everything changed when something made Grace suspicious; she was sitting knitting in the living room when she heard a sound upstairs. She saw two women outside the house, so she went to investigate and found her daughter sitting on the stairs.
The door to the room was completely locked with a key, so she asked Anne where the sound was coming from. Anne pointed to the room. Grace opened it carefully, went inside, and then closed the door behind her. Strangely, the room was completely empty. Suddenly, she heard whispering between two people, which terrified her. She began lifting the sheets to see what was covered, and inside she found a mirror that reflected the open door she had just closed. Frightened, she ran out of the room and asked her daughter where the women had gone. Anne said they had just passed by. Grace looked everywhere but found no trace of them.
It was a truly terrifying and mysterious scene, but it also raises some implications. If there were really people, why didn't she see them? Why was her daughter the only one she could see, and why were they with her in the house? And many other questions that this scene makes you ask yourself.
Grace decided to search the entire house. She was really afraid of what had happened and believed it was caused by an unknown intruder, but she found nothing except some strange pictures in one of the rooms. The pictures showed people who seemed to be sleeping. When she asked the maid if she knew anything about these pictures, the maid explained that they were of dead people, not sleeping. She said the photos were taken because they believed that their souls would live on through them, according to their strange beliefs at the time. Grace thought these were just superstitions and ordered the servant to get rid of the pictures.
Continuing the frightening events, Grace heard the piano playing that same night. When she went into the piano room and opened the door, the music suddenly stopped. As she entered, the door closed behind her by itself. She locked the piano with the key and then went outside, trying to close the room door easily, but it slammed shut forcefully and quickly, as if someone had kicked it hard. Grace fell to the ground, got up, and tried to open the door, but it was locked from the inside. She screamed for the maid, who came and took the room key from her. After unlocking the door and entering quickly, she found the piano open as if she had never locked it. It was a truly frightening shock to her.
Grace decided to seek the help of a priest to bless the house. She began to believe that there was something demonic in it, so she decided to bring him. The maid tried to dissuade her, but she was determined. After she went out, the maid stayed with the servant, and they discussed her belief that the house was haunted. The servant asked when this might be proven, pointing to the ground. The maid told him that everything has its time and ordered him to hide it well. The picture shifted to what they were pointing at, revealing a tombstone.
At the same time, Grace walked through a thick fog, got lost, and didn’t know where she was going. Suddenly, a figure appeared in the fog, and as he approached, there was a strange surprise—it was her husband Charles, who had returned from the war. She threw herself into his arms, and they went home together.
The scene of the father meeting his two children was very touching, filled with longing for them and for himself. While Grace and the maid prepared food for him, he went into his room and lay down on his bed, lost in thought.
The two children have lunch with their mother without their father, who for some unknown reason stays in his room, and Grace continues to stubbornly refuse to let anyone be with them in the house, despite her admission of this and her feeling that they are actually there.
The maid confesses to little girl Anne that she saw the same thing she saw and tells her that there will soon be big surprises and changes. This surprises Anne and makes her wonder. It seems that the three servants know the truth about the situation, but they are waiting for the mother to be convinced and realize this mysterious truth.
The events escalate frighteningly as her daughter wears a wedding dress, leaves the room, and when she returns, she finds her daughter holding a toy in one hand. The terrifying part is that this hand does not belong to her daughter but to an old woman.
When she turns to see her face, she sees the face of an old woman with two frightening eyes. She attacks her and screams, asking where her daughter is. The other responds in her daughter's voice. Then she removes the upper part of the dress and is shocked to see her daughter's face in front of her, which causes her to go into a terrible shock. The maid then enters to the sound of their screams, finds the little girl crying and saying she won't stop until she kills them, and then she leaves with the maid outside the room.
It really looked like Grace was losing her mind; her eyes certainly weren’t deceiving her, but she still didn't understand what was happening. Then she went into Charles' room, where he asked her what had happened that day. She said she didn't know what had happened to him and that the servants had left the house knowing she couldn't leave. Next, the scene shifted to the children, and Nicholas asked Anne what had happened. She replied that their mother had gone crazy, just like that day. Then the scene shifted back to the couple, and Grace told Charles that he should forgive her.
He told her that the children were the ones who should do that. She replied that they knew she loved them and she would never hurt them. Then she asked if he was angry with her, and he said he had come back only to say goodbye and was leaving again. She asked where he was going, and he said he was returning to the front. She said the war was over, but he told her it wasn't yet.
She started blaming him for going to a war that had nothing to do with them, and that others hadn’t gone either. He said the others surrendered to their fate; she shouted that everyone surrendered and the island was fully occupied, so what did he expect? She said he should have stayed with his family and wife who loved him—she said that was enough for her, even though she was in that prison. But he was not satisfied and left, crying in pain and regret. He tried to hug and kiss her, then they went to sleep.
When Grace woke up, Charles was already gone, and the terrifying events kept happening. Someone had torn the curtains off all the windows in the house, prompting Grace to try to shield her children from the light and to ask the servants about the curtains.
The maid Mills' response was odd. She asked her why she believed the light would kill them, so Grace called her crazy because she had already explained the reason beforehand. Mills reacted even more strangely, saying they might have recovered and that she wouldn't know if they had, unless daylight touched them. Grace accused her and the other two servants of trying to control the house since they started working there and told her to hand over the keys and leave immediately. She and the others complied.
After Grace dismissed the servants, she started searching for curtains all over the house while they decided to uncover the tombstones in the garden. Then night fell, and the two children sat waiting for their mother. Nicholas wondered why she was gone, so Anne told him that their mother had gone crazy, which he called her a liar for. Then the little girl got up, opened the window, and climbed down, telling her brother she was going to look for their father.
Her brother followed her, frightened, as they walked through the garden until they reached the tombstones. Anne read the names on them and was surprised to see they were the names of the servants. She was instantly scared and turned to her brother when she saw the servants coming toward them. She shouted for him to run because they were dead and now were ghosts. The children, terrified, hurried back together to the house.
Meanwhile, their mother, Grace, was still searching for the curtains in vain, but she found a picture. When she saw the faces of the dead people in it, she was instantly terrified because they looked like the three servants. Then she heard their screams outside the house, so she went outside immediately and called them. She saw them running toward the house, with the three servants following behind them in a strangely calm manner.
Grace tried to threaten them into staying away and actually fired several shots from a gun in her hand, but nothing happened to them. The maid Mills then told her that tuberculosis had actually killed them a long time ago, and this statement was really shocking and strangely direct, which made Grace retreat into the house and close it from the inside. She then saw the three servants standing at the door, with the maid Mills asking her to open it.
She was in a deep state of terror and ordered her children to go upstairs and hide, while the maid Mills talked to Grace and explained that she was trying to make her understand the new situation. Grace asked her what situation she was talking about, and Mills replied that they all must live in peace, whether dead or alive. Grace then shouted at her, "If you are dead, then leave us alone," and Mills responded that if they did that, the intruders would not, and they would definitely find them.
While the two children were hiding in the closet, they heard a voice asking them to join it. Suddenly, an old lady with frightening eyes opened the closet. The two children screamed in terror. It was the same lady and eyes that Grace had seen in her daughter's room, wearing a wedding dress. Grace heard their screams and froze in terror. Maid Mills told her that the intruders had found them and that she should go and talk to them.
It was a truly frightening situation for Grace. Downstairs, the ghosts of the dead lingered, and upstairs, invisible intruders lurked. What could she do in such a situation? Still, she gathered her courage, went upstairs trembling, and opened the door. Inside, she saw a group of people sitting at a table, and a woman with haunting eyes talking to them, asking them to tell her what their mother did to them.
She approached the child, whispered a few words in her ear, and the lady repeated what she said—that their mother did something related to a pillow. The lady then said, "So your mother killed you," causing Grace to gasp. The two children screamed that she didn't kill them. The lady continued, asking why they were still in the house if they were dead. The children repeated their screams, denying it, and Grace joined in screaming. She was in terrible hysteria, with tears streaming down her face. She tried to turn the table over, threw the paper she had in her hand into the air, and suddenly everything went quiet.
The end of the others
The intruders finally revealed the truth, and now Grace understood what was happening. From their perspective, they saw that continuing to stay in the house was impossible due to the terrifying situation of the dead communicating with them and their son seeing them. So, they decided to leave the place permanently.
From Grace and her children's perspective, the shock was overwhelming because they were living a normal life with no signs that they were dead. Not only that, but Grace's realization that she was responsible for killing her children and then herself was extremely painful. She didn't understand what had happened until after it was over. Their continued presence in the house and the sound of her children's laughter made her believe they were still alive, as if it was just a dream she would wake from. However, the painful truth was something she could never accept.
The scene that brought Grace together with her two children, along with her confession of what she did, was very important. She knew what happened but kept it locked away in her mind, preferring to live in a beautiful illusion with her children. The matter was completely isolated and vanished inside her. The hope that her children were still alive shattered anything that contradicted that. Nicole Kidman performed this scene with perfection and greatness; it made us feel sympathy for what actually happened and wonder about her secret of killing her children without ever getting a clear answer.
The movie portrayed beautiful family bonds and highlighted the depth of relationships between parents and children, which can sometimes lead to murder. A parent may not kill their children in vain but might do so to protect them from suffering or harm, though many might disagree with this view.
The lighting, photography, and performance are very impressive in this movie. Despite the dim lighting, the photography focused well on the faces to capture their emotions clearly and simply, which helped the performances stand out and look even more remarkable, especially from Grace (Nicole Kidman).
The horror presented by the movie is the fear of the unknown and the shock of realizing a truth your mind rejects, which is much more intense than traditional horror.
The little girl's question about the norms at the end of the movie caught my attention. Was the mother throwing from your point of view?
In short, I can say that it is an enjoyable, mysterious, and exciting movie. You might think it takes you to a place you know well, but then you are surprised as it sharply reveals your true place.
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