‘OTHER’ Review: A Solid Concept and Atmosphere Overcome a Shaky Ending
I went into OTHER, the new Shudder original from MadS filmmaker David Moreau, with no expectation or even a real hint of what I was about to see. It’s a rare treat when it comes to this gig, and watching the film that way, it was clear immediately that Moreau and company were on to something with this premise.
OTHER begins from a place of austere distance, only giving us so many clues as to its mystery, and yet layering in worldbuilding that allows imagination to bloom. It uses a classic setup for a horror story, a classic character type, and an appropriately gnarly opening kill to draw us in, and it really works. Unfortunately, it only works for so long, and by the time its third act rolls in, OTHER has morphed into an interesting but decidedly mixed bag, one that can’t maintain its grip on its central mystery but also can’t come up with a thoroughly satisfying conclusion. But when it’s working, it’s working.
Olga Kurylenko stars as Alice, who gets an unexpected call that her estranged mother has died. She returns home to the secluded home in the woods where she grew up, only to find that her mother has outfitted the house with sophisticated surveillance technology that’s both confusing and a little frightening. To make things more awkward, she’s stranded there when she locks herself out of her car.
While waiting for a technician to come to her rescue, Alice spends time wandering around the house getting drunk, dancing to her teenage music, and delving into the uncomfortable past she spent here. Her mother, a former pageant queen, was determined to make Alice a star just like her and thus subjected her to all manner of emotional and psychological abuse, much of which she caught on tape. Now, all those old scars rise back to the surface, even as something inhuman stalks the woods outside, something that seems to have a predilection for ripping the faces off its victims.
The facial element of the entity’s behavior is important because for basically the entire runtime of the film, with the exception of old photographs and videos, Alice’s face is the only one we see. Everyone else is obscured by masks, by clever camera placement, even by broken electronic screens that don’t allow us to make out anything but fragmented impressions of a human presence. The effect is one of isolation, both for the viewer and for Alice, as she’s forced to confront the reality of being alone not just with her thoughts, not just with a monster, but with her memories.
This is where the film most often succeeds, and Kurylenko does a fine job of carrying the film on her shoulders in this isolation, throwing Alice from melancholic to manic and back again, embracing her fear but also her coldness, the sense that she’s built some very solid walls between herself and the rest of the world. These walls are then challenged by whatever’s lurking out there in the woods, setting off alarms complete with flashing red lights and eerie sounds. Moreau’s camera creates not just a sense of lonely fear, but of almost cosmic mystery, drilling in for us that just about anyone, or anything, might be out there waiting to claim Alice for its own.
It all works quite well, right up until it doesn’t. The good news is that for at least 70 of its 95 minutes, OTHER is taut, intimate, and even harrowing, with flashes of whimsy and comedy in among the mystery. Its final act doesn’t undo this, but it also doesn’t improve upon it, either. This is a classic case of a mystery horror film in which the solution to the mystery is not nearly as compelling as it should be, not because it’s a bad idea, but because it’s all so abrupt. The answers arrive quickly, and while they do have a certain necessary context established by what came before, they still don’t feel earned. OTHER wraps up feeling rushed, emotionally vacant, and a bit puzzling. While that doesn’t scuttle the entire film, it does leave you wanting more.
But here’s the good news: Despite what feels like a rushed, somewhat wasted ending, I still want to go watch OTHER again. The imagery that Moreau plays with, the strength of Kurylenko’s performance, and the potency of that central mystery while it’s still unsolved have serious weight to them. The story has depth and mass and a form that’s compelling even when it starts to fall apart, and I suspect that watching the film again could offer greater rewards. Even after an ending that didn’t quite work for me, the allure is still there, and in an age when streaming horror films are seemingly endless, that’s enough to make OTHER stand out from the pack.
OTHER arrives October 17 on Shudder.
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Summary
While the ending is shaky, David Moreau’s ‘OTHER’ ultimately succeeds thanks to the film’s startling imagery, a strong central performance by Olga Kurylenko, and a potent central mystery.
Categorized: Reviews
