The Others Beat Sheet Analysis
Shari Simpson
Why we chose to do a Save the Cat!® beat sheet analysis of The Others
In most haunted house stories, the living are terrorized by ghosts. In The Others, the beat sheet must track the reverse. That was something we wanted to show. Also… it’s almost Halloween, which is always Monster in the House time at Save the Cat!
Written and Directed by: Alejandro Amenábar
Genre
Monster in the House
A hero is trapped in some location or situation (aka the “house”) and must survive a monster (human or otherwise). There must be a sin committed—often greed—prompting the creation of a supernatural being that comes like an avenging angel to kill the sinners. Monster in the House stories are commonly found in horror movies, urban thrillers, or comedies about people or things that just won’t go away.
The 3 elements of a Monster in the House story
- A monster that is supernatural in its powers—even if its strength derives from insanity—and “evil” at its core.
- A house, meaning an enclosed space that can include a family unit, an entire town, or even “the world.”
- A sin. Someone is guilty of bringing the monster in the house… a transgression that can include ignorance.
Save the Cat! Beat Sheet Analysis for The Others
Opening Image
We hear a mother’s gentle voice telling her children a story about how the world began, over sepia-toned drawings that start out beatifically and progressively get more menacing. A piercing scream gives us an immediate jump scare as Grace Stewart (Nicole Kidman) awakes from a nightmare, setting us up for slow burn horror with intermittent bouts of heart-racing terror.
Theme Stated
Grace tells the new servants that “the children have a very serious allergy to light.” In many horror films, characters suffer from a fear of the dark (nyctophobia), but in The Others, there is an absolute terror of the light.
Fear of the truth, of being exposed, is woven throughout every fiber of the film, from a servant who is unable to speak, to the children’s photosensitivity, to the absence of electricity and the intense need for every inner door to be locked at all times.
Set-Up
It’s 1945 and in their thesis world, Grace and her preternaturally pale children live in Jersey, a Channel Island formerly inhabited by German soldiers. Grace has advertised for new servants and a creepy threesome show up at her door on a foggy morning: Bertha (Fionnula Flanagan), Edmund (Erik Sykes), and the mute teenager, Lydia (Elaine Cassidy).
In this MITH film, the House in which the characters find themselves trapped is quite literally the Stewarts’ country house, from its remote location, constant gloomy weather, and a stifling number of rules Grace has instituted for safety, so-called.
The isolation is radical; no door must be opened without the previous one being locked first, there are no telephones or radios allowed, and most importantly, the curtains must be closed at all times because Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley) are deathly allergic to sunlight.
In this slow-burner, it takes some time to identify the Monster, and even longer to pick out the Sin, but eventually we’ll discover that it’s SACRILEGE. Grace is profoundly religious but has committed an abomination against God. This is the shard of glass that will drive all of her seemingly bizarre obsessions and actions.
Catalyst
Anne blurts out a secret to Bertha that turns everything on its head: in the past, their mother went mad.
Debate
Grace shuts this down quickly and comes out fighting against Bertha; her advertisement for new servants didn’t even make it into the newspaper, so how did she and the others know to apply for the job? In her freakishly friendly way, Bertha confesses that they used to work in this very house many years ago, and they returned because it means so much to them.
Grace is willing to let them stay, but Bertha needs to understand that she doesn’t cater to her children’s “strange ideas.” In other words, don’t ask about the insanity rumor, Bertie.
Grace doubles down, continuing to push her religious notions on Anne and Nicholas and exert control over her servants until things start to fall apart.
Break into Two
Grace hears a child crying somewhere in the house, but it’s not Anne or Nicholas. Cue the Creepy Kids and Supernatural Scares in one fell swoop.
B Story
Grace’s relationship with her missing soldier husband Charles (Christopher Eccleston) lurks in the background, stopping her cold whenever his name is mentioned.
When Charles finally appears, we start to see that perhaps all was not quite as peachy as Grace led us to believe. She insists that Charles left them over more than just going to war and he demands that she admit to some mysterious and horrendous infraction that has occurred.
Fun and Games
In an upside-down world where Grace watches her ironfisted control slip away bit by bit, Anne has been having chats with Victor, a little boy she claims lives in their house. She torments Nicholas by saying that Victor is opening curtains in their bedroom, and we do hear someone’s voice, but is it really a junior specter or just Anne being a typical older sister and bully?
Grace starts to hear voices as well, and soon enough, we get enough theater of the mind scares and jump scares to satisfy any horror lover. (On my first viewing of The Others in 2001, my movie companion jumped so violently, she dumped her extra-large Diet Coke into my lap.)
Shotgun in hand, Grace initiates a search of the entire house, discovering a photo album that at first appears to be pictures of people sleeping, but Bertha disabuses her of that notion. It’s a Book of the Dead, featuring those who have passed on but apparently were still fresh enough to photograph before burial. Bertha gives a prescient quote: “Grief over the death of a loved one can lead people to do the strangest things.” Let’s remember that one, folks, because it’s overstepping of the highest order.
After the grand piano starts playing itself, Grace has had enough, deciding to leave the house and go into the village to find the priest. If Victor is indeed a ghost kid, she wants a blessing on her home to rid them of this “aberration.”
Midpoint
In a stirring false victory, Grace comes upon her long-lost husband Charles wandering in the fog. But the utter strangeness of this sudden appearance puts us firmly into the uncanny valley and starts the dread clock a-ticking.
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Bad Guys Close In
Happy reunion or not, we start to suspect something is not quite right with old Chuck, beginning with his statement that “sometimes I bleed”—not exactly what you’re hoping to hear from a returning soldier. Charles seems shell-shocked, unable to eat or even get out of bed, but Grace acts as if his return has solved everything, especially the daft notion that there are intruders in the house.
Bertha tells Anne that eventually Grace will see “the others” and then everything will be different, but Bertha and Mr. Tuttle are soon covering up tombstones in the backyard, so we’re not sure how encouraging her words actually are.
When Charles disappears again, ostensibly returning to a war that has already ended, Grace is on the verge of falling apart.
Then, Anne awakens with a piercing scream to a flood of light; someone has removed all the curtains in the house. Enraged, Grace blames the servants and kicks them out, and in an ominous scare in the shadows, Bertha declares to Lydia and Mr. Tuttle that she is tired of Grace’s nonsense; it’s time to uncover those gravestones.
Meanwhile, Anne tells Nicholas that Mummy’s gone mad again and they escape out into the woods to find their father.
All Is Lost
While looking for the missing curtains, Grace finds a death photo of Bertha, Lydia, and Mr. Tuttle, just as Anne and Nicholas find their gravestones in the woods.
Dark Night of the Soul
Grace realizes that her greatest fear has been realized—her home has been invaded by people she trusted. And to make it worse, those invaders are deceased.
Break into Three
The three servants move slowly towards the children in the woods, like the walking undead.
Finale
Now Grace must storm the castle to save Anne and Nicholas, so she gathers the team (a shotgun and rosary beads) and executes the plan, shooting at the ghosts. When that (shockingly) doesn’t work, she locks them out and sends the kids upstairs to hide.
Bertha warns Grace that the others are in the house with them, and Grace dashes upstairs to finally discover the mother of all high tower surprises: there is a seance being conducted, designed to reach the real ghosts, whom, in a BIG Shamalayan-esque TWIST, are Grace, Anne, and Nicholas themselves.
Through the seance, we find out that Grace did indeed go mad after finding out about Charles’s death in the war and smothered her children with a pillow, then shot herself. Yep, they’ve been haunting their own house, and Victor and his parents are the only live folks here.
But that’s about to change, because in this unwelcome synthesis of the dead and the living, Grace digs deep down and decares that they’re not going anywhere. She plucks out her bloody shard of glass and finally becomes the mother she’d always dreamed of, protecting her children from “the others.”
Final Image
The happy ghost family and their specter servants stand at the window and watch as Victor and his family pack up and hit the road. Even though there’s a FOR SALE sign on the fence, these Monsters own this House, Sin be damned.
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