THE OTHERS

Of all the different kinds of horror movies, ghost stories have always been among the most problematic, usually because the filmmakers never seem to take a Christian worldview toward the material. At least in some Dracula movies, the monster is afraid of the Cross, the symbol of Christ’s vicarious atonement for our sins.

The new ghost movie, THE OTHERS, doesn’t ignore Christian beliefs. Far from it. Instead, its strong occult worldview eventually, and overtly, attacks the Christian beliefs of its conflicted heroine, Grace. The upshot of the movie’s worldview is that there is really no Heaven or Hell and that the dead continue to live and can achieve redemption for their sins on their own power and merit instead of Jesus Christ’s. Thus, THE OTHERS explicitly rejects Christianity and contains false religious notions about redemption and the afterlife.

In the story of the movie, Nicole Kidman plays Grace, a young woman waiting for her beloved husband to return from World War II. Grace has been raising her two young children alone in a cavernous Victorian mansion on the secluded isle of Jersey between England and Normandy. Isolated from the rest of the world, Grace is a fervent Christian, teaching her faith to her children, who she says suffer from some terrible skin disease which requires them to refrain from all forms of sunlight. Grace also tells one child to ask forgiveness from “the Virgin” and describes a vision of Eternal Damnation, or Hell, for sinful children which she calls “Limbo.” (These statements obviously bear no relation to real Christian beliefs, and I don’t think even Roman Catholics believe such things, even though many Roman Catholics often talk about the Virgin Mary and sometimes mention the concept of “Limbo.”)

When three mysterious new servants arrive to replace the ones that inexplicably left, startling, supernatural events begin to unfold. Grace’s daughter reveals that she has been communicating with unexplained ghosts or poltergeists. At first, Grace is reluctant to believe in these frightening apparitions, but the poltergeists eventually make their presence known even to her. Who are these intruders, and why are they here? The movie’s answer to these questions is what drives its anti-Christian occult worldview.

Because of its explicitly anti-Christian, occult worldview, THE OTHERS is truly an abhorrent movie, despite its fine production values and wonderful acting by Nicole Kidman as the mother, Fionnula Flanagan as Mrs. Mills the mysterious housekeeper, and especially Alakina Mann and James Bentley as the two children, Anne and Nicholas.

Statistics show that there are only about 14 million spiritists or spiritualists in the whole world, compared to about two billion professing Christians, but unsuspecting people looking for a scary story may be lured by the advertising for THE OTHERS. Getting the word out on the silly, anti-Christian worldview of THE OTHERS may help prevent moviegoers from ever getting hooked by this kind of dangerous, demonic material again. The question is, what can stop filmmakers from pursuing such financially risky stories? Of course, donations to MOVIEGUIDE®, its parent the Christian Film & Television Commission Annual Awards Gala and our MOVIEGUIDE® Report to the Entertainment Industry can help us alert both them and their financial bosses.