I like the movie, but it was rather uneventful. I liked the character interactions and the cinematography. I loved the different camera angles and closeup shots. However, I did not feel any sense of claustrophobia.
shareGreat director, great source material, great performances. And it was made in that PSYCHO/TwilightZone/JFK/ColdWar era which really was almost the end of the world, and "creepy" was staggeringly easy to do on both the big and small screens.
It's always notable to me how much the ornithologic assault on Tippi Hedren in the attic room near the end of THE BIRDS feels like Janet Leigh's shower scene in PSYCHO, while the nocturnal bird attack in Jesica Tandy's house feels like the visitation in Claire Bloom's room in THE HAUNTING (also 1963).
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LBJ's mistress on JFK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcXeutDmuRA
I agree with everything you said. It was fun. It was spooky and it was creepy creepy. But I didn't find it scary. The novel by the goddess eternal, Shirley Jackson, is wonderful.
I thought I was gonna die! - Roseanne Roseannadanna
I saw this a few years back in a large theater in Glendale and still found that it hadn't lost any of its edge. Maybe all that darkness in the theater, the quiet parts, the booming, are intensified in such a surrounding.
Or maybe it's just that I saw the film when it was released (I was very young) and it terrified me and that trauma still resonates.
It's my #1.
And you're right about that little novel, almost a novelette. It wasn't until I read The Shining that I found a book nearly as unnerving.
No fate but what we make. -Terminator II
Have you ever seen "The Innocents"? I first saw that movie when I was a full grown adult and I use that word loosely and "The Innocents" is deeply, deeply terrifying. "The Innocents" is my all time favorite scary movie. Because everything grows in the imagination.
I thought I was gonna die! - Roseanne Roseannadanna
Arguably, the two best ghost/haunted house movies were made during the early-'60s, THE INNOCENTS and THE HAUNTING. (Although 1943's THE UNINVITED and 2001's THE OTHERS deserve acknowledgement).
THE INNOCENTS benefits from marvelous direction and incredibly atmospheric B&W direction, but to me it always feels like a series of brilliantly-realized macabre cinematic vignettes strung together. While I find THE HAUNTING's narrative holds together better.
But both are brilliant.
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Have you ever seen "The Innocents"? I first saw that movie when I was a full grown adult and I use that word loosely and "The Innocents" is deeply, deeply terrifying. "The Innocents" is my all time favorite scary movie. Because everything grows in the imagination.
I have watched "The Innocents" a number of times over the decades, and even though I think it's a fine film in its own right, it never really left much of an impression on me in the same way "The Haunting" did (and still does!)
However, I did thoroughly enjoy "The Others" with Nicole Kidman. Probably not quite so subtle as the first two examples, but some of the scenes were disturbing/eerie; just like the wallpaper impression, and the "holding hands" scenes in The Haunting, for example.
“When is old news gonna be old news?”
― Arnold Vinick (The West Wing)
I have watched "The Innocents" a number of times over the decades, and even though I think it's a fine film in its own right, it never really left much of an impression on me in the same way "The Haunting" did (and still does!)
However, I did thoroughly enjoy "The Others" with Nicole Kidman. Probably not quite so subtle as the first two examples, but some of the scenes were disturbing/eerie; just like the wallpaper impression, and the "holding hands" scenes in The Haunting, for example.
The Others borrows (whole cloth) from both The Innocents and The Haunting, as well as many other horror standards, to good effect - with that little unexpected jump (concerning a portrait?) in one shot that got the audience screaming, added.
The Innocents did a lot with silence and that stark B/W. Dead silence in a large, dark movie theater has its own creepiness factor.
We have a physical therapist who works on a floor above us and one piece of equipment can only be heard banging rhythmically in the echoey stairwell. The sound never has failed to take me back to The Haunting - almost sixty years later. THAT'S an impression.
No fate but what we make. -Terminator II
Oh, there's no question THE OTHERS borrows from other movies. Most movies do and have to.
The question though is quality of execution -- that's what distinguishes films with a similar premise.
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The first scary movie I saw as a young boy. Sure scared me enough to stay awake all night.
The last 30 minutes of the movie were really good. I started to become unnerved by the loud banging on the door and the movements it made. Also, the part when Grace appeared in that trap door made me yelp, then once more at the end as Eleanor was driving away and saw Grace run behind the tree. Unfortunately, up until then, I found it difficult at times to care about the movie.
I suppose that by today's standards it is "uneventful". I don't see why it has to be.
"I liked the character interactions and the cinematography. I loved the different camera angles and closeup shots."
There ya go!
I found it very chilling myself.
I feel the movie was not diverse enough. They should have included some black actors.
shareNo, it wasn't scary. It could've been creepy, but it was kind of ruined by not-so-great build-up and intrusive voice-over.
shareI saw this as a teen back in the late 70's late at night(alone in a rural area of Vermont). Believe me, I was scared beyond belief. I guess it depends if you see it in a crowd of people or alone. I just kept thinking something bad was going to happen and I wouldn't be able to get help in time. After it was over, I was lying on the couch and I thought someone came into the front door(thought it was my parents) I felt a presence come up upon me. I felt someone touch me on my shoulder(my back was turned from the presence). I quickly turned around and no one was there. All of this made me really scared. This experience makes this still scary for me even today.
shareI just found the atmosphere and Eleanor's slow, gradual obsession with the house to be creepy.
I do agree that some of the acting wasn't very good.