Movies
The Others
“It’s a film that can provoke chills of pleasure when viewed in the right environment, and high-definition picture and sound certainly add a buttload to the experience.”
Blu-ray review:
It’s hard to believe it’s been almost 15 years since director Alejandro Amenabar caught our attention with Open Your Eyes, his dreamy, twisty suspense film from 1997. Tom Cruise was so impressed with Open Your Eyes, he promptly made a shitty remake with Cameron Crowe, hired Amenabar to write and direct The Others with then-wife Nicole Kidman, and then divorced Kidman to date Open Your Eyes star Penelope Cruz. It’s a film that obviously had a profound effect on Cruise, and The Others, which followed four years later, had a similarly profound effect on theater audiences, banking $96 million in worldwide box office on a $17 million budget. Flaunting an inviting PG-13 rating and strong word of mouth, The Others clung stubbornly to the list of top 5 box office performers for 8 consecutive weeks. It even gained ground during the week preceding Halloween in 2001, indicating that some movie-goers had seen it more than once.
Nicole Kidman plays the overprotective mother of two young children who suffer from an allergy to sunlight. Sequestered in an enormous mansion in the post-World War II British countryside, her little family is plagued by a series of mysterious, supernatural occurrences.
As Kidman explains to her new servants in the early going, the mansion lacks electrical power, and other than its big twist ending, The Others is probably best remembered for its mesmerizing interior lighting scheme. Amenabar is a director who paints with light and shadow, and the high-definition imagery flaunts his artistry. Although I initially dismissed The Others when seeing it in 2001 (I liked it better when I saw it in 1999 and it was called The Sixth Sense), it’s unquestionably a film that takes full advantage of the Blu-ray format. The rich, complicated Foley work is spectacular. Unlike a slam-bang action film that’s perpetually loud and in-your-face, The Others Blu-ray rides the full spectrum of sound design, from the quieter, whispery moments, to the rib-goosing soundtrack swells. It’s a film that can provoke chills of pleasure when viewed in the right environment, and high-definition picture and sound certainly add a buttload to the experience.
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Sound: DTS-HD Master Audio
Extra Features:
The features seem to mirror those included with the 2-disc DVD release (minus the photo gallery). Lame.
“A Look Inside The Others”: A 20-minute doc that encapsulates the film.
“Xeroderma pigmentosum: What is it?”: An 8-minute look at a family that has experienced the same super-rare disease that caused the children in The Others to be sensitive to sunlight.
“An Intimate Look at Alejandro Amenabar”: How intimate can you get over the course of 8 minutes? Not very.
“Special Effects”: A 4-minute short dealing with the film’s special effects.
This week kicked off with the release of hippo horror movie Hungry at home, and four more horror movies have arrived for at-home viewing as we head into the final weekend of June.
Here are the new horror movies that released on Friday, June 26, 2026!
The Halloween season can no longer be contained to the months of September and October, with “Summerween” becoming a thing in recent years. Essentially, it allows for Halloween to bleed into the warmer Summer months, and the first ever Summerween movie has arrived.
The Asylum released Summerween onto Digital outlets today.
In the film from writer/director Ryan Ebert, “On Summerween, a former circus clown escapes a mental institution to return to his abandoned mansion and hunt the teens partying there.”
Cole Chapleski, Chase Breithoff, Logan Roe, Sophia Sabol, and Clint Morrison star.
Director Ryan Ebert is the man behind a string of recent indie horrors we’ve covered, including Shark Side of the Moon, The Jolly Monkey, Jurassic Reborn, and Predator: Wastelands.
A witchy coming-of-age story from Dark Sky Films, Camp is now playing in select theaters.
Check your local listings to find a theater near you.
Camp is from writer-director Avalon Fast (Honeycomb, The Serpent’s Skin).
“Emily is the root cause of two devastating tragedies very early in her life, and she feels the weight of these accidents as though cursed. At her father’s suggestion, she takes a position at a summer camp for troubled youth to ease her guilt. When Emily arrives, she is welcomed by the other counselors, who accept her as she is and surround her with peace and forgiveness.
“As Emily begins to believe in a new kind of life, she starts to hear a voice whispering from deep in the woods — one that urges her to go home, and one that may be impossible to ignore.”
The film stars Zola Grimmer in her screen debut alongside Alice Wordsworth, Cherry Moore, Lea Rose Sebastianis (Castration Movie Part 1 & 2, In A Violent Nature), Ella Reece, Austyn Van de Kamp (This Too Shall Pass), Sophie Bawks-Smith (Honeycomb), Izza Jarvis, and Aiden Laudersmith.
Producers Tyler Perry and Jason Blum have joined forces for Peacock Original Strung.
The film is now streaming only on Peacock.
“A talented violinist takes a prestigious job as a music tutor for the gifted daughter of an influential and enigmatic family. As she becomes entangled in their opulent world, unsettling secrets begin to surface, forcing her to question her safety, her dreams, and even her sanity.”
Malcolm D. Lee (Scary Movie 5, Space Jam: A New Legacy) directs from a script written by Alan B. McElroy (Wrong Turn, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers).
Chloe Bailey (“Swarm“), Lynn Whitfield (Jaws: The Revenge), Lucien Laviscount (“Scream Queens”), Anna Diop (Us), Coco Jones (Vampires vs. the Bronx), Langley Kirkwood (“Banshee”), and Romy Woods star in Peacock’s Strung.
Produced by Diablo Cody, director Meredith Alloway’s Forbidden Fruits brought a new coven of witches to the big screen earlier this year, and it’s now streaming on Shudder.
Lola Tung (“The Summer I Turned Pretty”), Victoria Pedretti (“The Haunting of Hill House”), Alexandra Shipp (Tragedy Girls), Gabrielle Union (Breaking In), and Emma Chamberlain star in Forbidden Fruits, released by IFC and Shudder.
Free Eden employee Apple secretly runs a witchy femme cult in the basement of the mall store after hours. But when new hire Pumpkin challenges the group’s ‘girl boss’ ways, the women are forced to face their own poisons or succumb to a bloody fate.
“Forbidden Fruits grabbed me by the neck the very first time I read it,” Diablo Cody said. “It’s one of the craziest, most creative, beautifully bonkers projects I’ve ever worked on.”
Meagan Navarro writes in her review for Bloody Disgusting, “Forbidden Fruits may not necessarily forge new terrain in the teen satire space, but Alloway brings so much style and energy to her well-cast single-location stage play adaptation for the Gen Z crowd.”
The film is an adaptation of playwright Lily Houghton’s stage play Of the Women Came the Beginning of Sin and Through Her We All Die. Alloway and Houghton co-adapted.
This week’s new release roundups are presented by HUNGRY.
All aboard the swamp tour from hell – this hippo isn’t playing games…
HUNGRY is now available on Digital. Watch it now!
You must be logged in to post a comment.