I’ll the sum this up real quick for you. The first ninety minutes are boring. The last ten minutes are great. The Others got made because of the success of The Sixth Sense. Remember how in The Sixth Sense it was pretty creepy and then at the end there is a big twist and you find out that Bruce Willis is dead? Guess what happens in The Others? Only this time it’s Nicole Kidman instead of Bruce. Seriously, same shit.  I’m not saying this is totally accurate, but I am pretty sure this is how the conference call went down between the producers and studio heads when The Others left theaters after three weeks.
Movie Exec One: What do you mean it tanked?
Movie Exec Two: It tanked. No one liked it.
ME1: How could it tank? We used a sure fire formula.
ME2: I have no idea. We completely ripped off The Sixth Sense. We had a main character who was dead. We got child actors creepier than Haley Joel Osment, and our kids were dead! If that’s not spooky, I don’t know what is.
ME1: Maybe we had too many ghosts?
ME2: Too many ghosts? You can never have two many ghosts! The more ghosts the more weird everything is. People like weird.
ME1: Naw, what people like is Julia Roberts.
ME2: Good point. What else we got in the pipeline?
ME1: Well, another Batman
movie is about due. Oh, and we got this really preachy Kevin Spacey
movie where he plays a paramedic who wants to make sure that the people
he’s saving are actually worth it. Those two and then seventeen more
teen flicks.
ME2: Sounds great. Do have Martin’s cell phone?
Should you see The Others? Lots of folks I talk to claim to like it. They think it is creepy. It is sort of creepy, but the creepiness comes from the fact that Kidman’s kids have some dumb disease where they might die if they are exposed to sunlight (Really, both kids). So, all the curtains in the house must be drawn shut and all the doors locked. So when doors become mysteriously unlocked or the curtains get opened – Terror!!! However, I am never a big fan of basing a movie’s plot around a children’s disease. It’s a weak crutch used in place of having a more compelling plot. Also, it turns out in the end that all the characters are dead anyway, so who cares? Yawn.
Ruthless Ratings
- Overall: 3
- Direction: 5
- Acting: 7
- Story: 2
- DVD Extras: A whole extra disk… Woopee!
- Re-watchability: 2
Special Ruthless Ratings
- Number of times I had to force myself to write this review on account of the movie being so dull: 9
- Number of times the little boy creeped me out with his big eyes, blood red lips and pasty skin:4
- Number of times the little girl creeped me out: 0
- Number of times you realized how great a movie Van Zant’s To Die For is: 12
- Number of times the oppressive sound track made you reach for your knife: 30 – It featured an all creepy music score. Scary!
- Number of times you realized that without The Sixth Sense having been such a big hit, The Others wouldn’t even have been thought of, let alone made: 14