Editorials
A Pastoral Hell: Robert Mulligan’s ‘The Other’ (1972)
“Do you know about the well? That dark and secret place where the accident happened – one of the accidents, I should say.”
It’s the summer of 1935 on the Connecticut farm of the Perry clan. The cattails are in full bloom, the apple cellar is full, and the fish are biting. This pastoral setting makes the perfect playground for twin brothers Niles and Holland. It also sets a deceiving stage for some piercing psychological horror. Opened quietly in theaters in May 1972, Robert Mulligan’s The Other is a stealthy film. Like its source novel by Thomas Tyron (who wrote the screenplay), it toys with expectations before pulling back the curtain to reveal the true horror at the heart of the narrative. And after four decades of similar films, The Other holds up damn well today.
What exactly is that “true” horror at the narrative’s heart? That’s a tough one ultimately left up to the audience. All we know for certain is that something sinister is lurking around the Perry family farm. Their bucolic paradise is shattered by a series of macabre accidents – pitchfork impalement, a crippling tumble down the stairs, an old woman literally scared to death. And it all started with the death of their patriarch – who was killed when the door to the cellar slammed on him, sending him face first down the wooden steps.
Since her husband’s tragic death, Alexandra Perry (Diana Muldaur) has been a shadow of her former self. She rarely leavers her bedroom and when her sons come pining for her love, she’s distant. Her detachment doesn’t seem to bother 13-year-old Niles and Holland – real-life twins Chris and Martin Udvarnoky in their only film roles. The boys have a summer of mischievous boyhood exploits ahead of them. Grab your slingshot.
Niles, younger than Holland by six minutes, is caring and eager to please his family. Holland is devilishly sociopathic, alarmingly world-weary for his age. When their snitch cousin Piggy catches them playing in the cellar (off-limits since daddy’s death), Niles freaks with worry over the consequences. Holland doesn’t sweat it. He knows Piggy doesn’t have the stones to tell on them. And if he does, he’ll just kill one of his pet rats. Holland’s full of “pranks” like that. But as the summer heats up, his pranks get increasingly perverse and Niles can only cower and watch the horror show unfold.
The story of an evil, manipulative twin is nothing new. 1946’s The Dark Mirror is a primo older example, De Palma’s Sisters is a favorite of mine, and last year’s Goodnight Mommy is a recent instance (that I can’t help think lifted a lot from The Other). The film has plenty of psychological horror tropes in it, but it’s the way Mulligan weaves together this patchwork and then unravels it that makes The Other so goddamn potent.
Mulligan is best known for To Kill a Mockingbird and like that classic, The Other is a naturalistic film loaded with period details – the rusty weather vane, the Chevy Coupe, the tire-swing. The film creates a spell with this beautiful, rustic imagery, making the horrors to come that much more impactful. How can evil exist in God’s country?
While many contemporary horror films save their big “twist” for the final reel, The Other’s revelation comes an hour into its 100 minute running time. There are plenty of subtle hints leading up to the reveal – how people talk to the twins, the way Mulligan pans the camera. A modern audience can spot the curveball coming a mile away, but a film like The Other doesn’t bank on the twist, like say The Sixth Sense does. It doesn’t matter if you figure out the twist five minutes in or 50 minutes in. It doesn’t soften the terrific blows that come during the final minutes of the film. The inconceivable final “accidents” that befall the Perry family come relentlessly in these closing moments, and even by today’s unflinching standards they’re wicked disturbing.
It all leads up to the last shot of the film, which leaves plenty up for interpretation. Was the Perry family besieged by a supernatural phantom? A bout of insanity caused by severe loss? Much of horror is concerned with our fear of loss and its inescapable victory. The Other explores that fear in spades and looks at how the old and young deal with it.
By the end of the film, the pastoral beauty has lost its innocence. Any bit of rustic splendor shot by Mulligan feels tainted. It doesn’t feel like charming nostalgia anymore. It just feels like the farm and the family that’s lived there for centuries is damned, damned, damned.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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