25 things you didn’t know about your favorite horror movies

The Others – A creepy historical fact that made it into the plot

The Others is a creepy film with a twist that nobody expected. If you’ve waited 17 years to watch it, you deserve to be spoiled.

Grace Stewart (Nicole Kidman) moves to a huge mansion on a mostly deserted island with her two children, Anne and Nicholas. Both children are photosensitive, meaning they cannot be touched by direct sunlight, so they are to stay holed up in the mansion with the curtains drawn at all times.

When three odd servants begin to work at the mansion, Grace starts to feel unsettled by some of the strange occurrences taking place in her home. For starters, Grace realizes that the letter with the ad looking for servants was never delivered to the local newspaper, so how did these three strangers know about the position?

Grace hears talking and whispering coming from empty rooms, and her children tell her about other kids they talk to in the house. She is sure there are intruders, but can’t seem to find them.

Then there’s the big twist: Grace and her children are dead. The servants are also dead. They all somehow still live in the house, and the intruders they kept hearing were the house’s real, living occupants.

To make the story that much creepier, the concept of 19th-century “death photography” is brought up. Grace finds a photo album of people she thinks are asleep, but they are actually dead bodies, dressed up and posed for photographs. This was common practice back then, especially with young children who didn’t get a chance to grow up.

This morbid trend became so popular because photography was such a rarity in the 19th century. Most of the time, these death photographs were the only photos they would have of their loved ones.