"The Other" is a painfully slow and boring, though occasionally interesting film.
**SPOILERS**
Living together in Connecticut, twins Niles, (Chris Udvarnoky) and Holland Perry, (Martin Udvarnoky) along with their mother Alexandra, (Diana Muldaur) and Ada, (Uta Hagen) their grandmother. As they bicker with each other and their relatives like brothers, Ada helps Niles hone his psychic skills, like her. After visiting a circus, he becomes infatuated with magic, and begins practicing on family. As several deaths mysteriously plague the family, the neighbors start to get a little curious as to what's happening. When they expose a long-held secret involving the brothers to the light of day, it threatens to tear the family apart. Gathering up their last ounce of courage, they struggle to make it out of a nightmare of horror that is unleashed upon the members of the family.
The Good News: There's really only a few items in here that is any good. The main amount of interest is the final twenty minutes of the film. This gives it the closest it gets to providing any horror, where the discovery of the twins and their relationship through the family is finally exposed. From the opening thunderstorm and foreshadowing done with the baby, it creates an impressive atmosphere that's hard to ignore. The panic and chaos that erupts afterwords is quite surreal and realistically and it makes for some really great moments. The chilling revelation with the discovery of the baby is the film's biggest shock and is a really frightening idea in itself. The confrontation in barn at the end is another really big plus, where a second twist is brought up and a culmination with several big action scenes really helping to sell the event. The only other thing is the film's opening kill, where a previously-unseen pitchfork is used to impale an unsuspecting victim who is falling into bales of hay. That it shows up in the middle of the scene is the best part, as it comes out of nowhere and delivers a great shock This here are the extent of the film's positives.
The Bad News: There's not a whole lot wrong with this one, but what's here is pretty major. The most important one is that the film's first half is just ungodly boring. The first half is mainly filled up with endless scenes of children wandering around doing child-like behavior with the two brothers, and it's just endlessly boring. They do act like how young brothers of that age should be, which is nice, but it just translates to minutes of hearing them talk to each other or playing like children at a young age, including getting into mischief with each other, the neighbors and family members. It's realistic, but provides no scares at all, and results in the beginning really feeling stretched out. There's a sense of being lulled into a false-state of security, but the actions chosen really don't inspire fear of them. This approach would've worked had it been a series of events that were a little off for normal children, thereby implying that they weren't right. That would play up their unusualness a little more effectively and mount up a big area of tension. Another pretty big flaw is the introduction of a twist that is incredibly easy to spot and doesn't come as another other than a desperation maneuver to liven up the film. It is incredibly easy to spot, yet is played off as a major secret to be revealed in the film. This is easy to spot, which makes it hard for it to be the real shock it's supposed to be. The last other flaw is that the film is simply way too confusing with it's set-pieces. There's so many items brought up that it's impossible to keep track of why they're significant. That there's a ring, a falcon, several secrets and more involved in this, and it's almost impossible to make out any connection in this. These all move the film down somewhat.
The Final Verdict: Largely overrated due to it's deathly pacing and unsurprising shock, this is a hard one to really get into. Fans of this particular style of film probably might this, though those that are more into the blood-and-guts style are advised to keep an open mind with this one.
Rated PG: Violence and mild Language
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