This August, Alejandro Amenábar’s horror drama The Others turns twenty years old. At the time of its release, The Others was both a financial and critical success, pulling in a nearly $210 million worldwide gross on a $17 million budget with critics such as Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers calling the film a “master class." With a third-act twist just as memorable as, and similar to, M. Night Shyamalan’s “I see dead people” in The Sixth Sense, The Others has its fair share of creepy children and their antics, an eerie atmosphere set in a secluded Victorian estate, and some genuinely spine-tingling scares and imagery. With James Wan’s The Conjuring films and Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House and follow-up Bly Manor, it’s time to reconsider how The Others fits into this current moment of horror dramas and domestic ghost stories.
