The Others
As successful a genre revitalization as you’re likely to find. Recaptures the restrained elegance of the mid-20th century’s best gothic horror so seamlessly that it never feels like a concentrated attempt to “recapture” anything, it just is.
It feels slightly strange to see a horror film so “recent” boast such an unimpeachable classical sensibility. It feels timeless on every technical level - luxuriously produced, none of the scrappy “make what you can with what you got” ethos that became the horror norm after the smash successes of films like Saw and Paranormal Activity. And while I love a killer microbudget-that-could it’s so apparent watching something as graceful as The Others that we are poorer for not having this stripe of horror regularly represented in cinemas.
Gorgeously designed and photographed, the “look” of it is simultaneously naturalistic and formally refined within an inch of its life. The emphasis on neutral-toned sources, casting delicately positioned shadows across Kidman and Co’s features, evokes 80’s Merchant-Ivory productions in the best way. That oil painting palette that coaxes the most romantic side out of 35mm. 823
Truly stellar photography.
The mark of a great movie twist is not how successfully it fools the audience, it’s in how much impact the twist has regardless of if the audience was fooled or not. I, personally, had been made aware of the twist of The Others for years before I now finally got around to seeing the film. And yet when the moment came it still floored me: <PERSON> and <PERSON>’s haunting go-for-broke turns, <PERSON>’s swelling declarative score, <PERSON>’s heightened and surreal lensing. There’s a symphonic quality to those climactic beats that had me on cloud nine, totally swept up in the melodrama on the pure power of it’s artist’s commitment to their craft. A cast and crew firing on all possible cylinders to bring together a true all-timer movie moment that takes an already-very good movie and propels it into greatness.
What a finale. What a movie.
Vidiot’s Eagle Theatre
DCP 529