A classic example of how a twist can make or break how you feel about a movie. While the twist was only hinted at, making it unpredictable, I still didn't like the payoff. I wish we had seen the movie that was subject of the twist and not the movie we got. I do like the setting, location, atmosphere, and performances. I like the religious themes dealing with the interpretation of the afterlife. The characters weren't interesting enough for such a movie though and I found myself disliking most of them for most of the movie. Fionnula Flanagan's performance is a standout. She balances being both creepy and warm with excellent timing. There is a mystery that kept me interested. I would just rather watch something like I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, a movie that deals with similar outcomes, before I watch this again.
The movie starts with a voiceover narration about God's existence. The opening credits have this cool sepia colored illustrations to them. After some pleasant woodwind and string music by Alejandro Amenabar, Grace (Nicole Kidman) wakes up from a nightmare screaming really loud. Nice 180 degree camera angle here. Grace lives with her two children Nicholas (James Bentley) and Anne (Alakina Mann). They live in a country house in Jersey, an island occupied by the Germans in WW2 which just ended. Three people show up: the deaf and mute Lydia (Elaine Cassidy), Bertha Mills (Fionnula Flanagan), and Edmund Tuttle (Eric Sykes). They responded to an Ad to work for the house. Grace gives them rules to lock each door behind them. Her children have a photosensitivity so any room without curtains needs to be locked.
Grace is devoutly religious. After mysterious things start happening in the house Grace tries to shutdown any suspicion of the supernatural. She gets hit by a closing door after investigating the piano playing by itself. She hears voices coming from the junk room and uncovers all the items under the sheets but doesn't find anything. At night Anne is visited by a boy known only as Victor. She says his father is a pianist and his mother is a witch. It is eventually revealed that the three houseworkers came to the house after living there before as Grace had never sent in that Ad. Grace orders them to find the graveyard as she goes for a priest to bless the house. At this point Bertha and Tuttle have a conversation revealing their other motives and he covers up a gravestone with leaves. Instead of finding anyone Grace gets lost in a sea of fog and finds her husband Charles (Christopher Eccleston). Charles still believes the war is going on and leaves the next day to go back to the front. Grace eventually finds pictures of burnt corpses. Bertha eventually reveals that years ago many people died from a tuberculosis outbreak and that is why they left the house.
Before I get to spoilers I wanted to talk about some of the things I did enjoy in this movie. I always love scary images and random things in the background more than actual jump scares and there is one moment like that I love in this movie where the dark light of the room only illuminates the face of a dark painting and you think it is a real face before the lights turn on. The religious themes are interesting even if they don't go as in depth with it as I would like. Early in the movie Grace and her kids are reading the Bible and they read about disciples saying they believe in Jesus but are still harmed. The kids say they wouldn't say they believe if it actually saves them. Grace disagrees and says that kids who don't believe go to limbo, a place of nothingness. She later takes this back. This movie is very much about someone learning to accept their actions but also letting go of their beliefs to face a certain reality. Fionnula Flanagan is great in this movie. At times she has this warm persona, specifically when talking to the children. As the movie goes on though once their motives are revealed she becomes much colder and looks a lot like the satanic housekeeper of The Omen. I also liked that I could never master the geography of the house. It always kept up mystery by seeming infinitely big.
Fionnula Flanagan as Bertha
Spoiler Section
The kids keep talking about a time when Grace went mad. Grace eventually finds an old woman in a dress trying to pass as her daughter and once she tears the dress of it actually is Anne. She fires the three housekeepers after they take the curtains down. One night she finds a picture of the three of them dated 1891. So they are ghosts. Anne and Nicholas find their gravestones outside and then see them. Nicholas at first doesn't believe Anne when she says they are ghosts but they soon retreat into the house. They warn Grace about the intruders. It is eventually revealed that the old woman Grace saw earlier is a medium who finds out that Grace killed her children and herself and now haunts the house. Grace realizes "the others," are live people who moved into the house and that her, her family, and servants are dead.
What I like about this is the religious implications it shows. Grace through her domineering seems to be unable to accept death and does everything to fight against it. She doesn't want to accept what she did to her children either. I still have questions though. Was the photosensitivity not a thing anymore because they were dead? Is Charles in a purgatory of some kind? It seems as though he is between living and dead. I do like at the end when Grace admits she isn't sure if limbo is real, making her turn complete as she now knows they are dead. I think if this movie were made now they may have shown both perspectives. I know showing the family may have just been another haunting type of story but I think I would have liked it more than this, even though I still like this. I just wish some of the characters would have been more likable. I'm not saying they have to be happy but there was nothing to tie me to them besides those religious themes. It's almost like they are written as a proxy for those themes rather than as characters. I associate this with how I felt about The Lodge. While I liked the twist much better in this movie I still wish there were something different. In this case I wanted to see the family going through what they went through in the house.
Rating: 7/10
Trivia: The disease the children have is called xeroderma Pigmentosum which is a sensitivity to sunlight. It is estimated that only 1000 people have it.
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