Fridge / The Others (2001)

Fridge Brilliance

• Grace's odd reaction when she first picks up her shotgun - she pauses, frowns and looks at it for a moment, as if trying to recall something, but then pushes it out of her head and carries on.
• After Grace takes up the shotgun the first time, she never has to go find it again. It just appears whenever she reaches for it. Of course it does, it's not any more corporeal than she is.
• Mr. Tuttle's seemingly throwaway line "I expect he's dead, like all the rest" takes on a new and much more significant meaning after the first reveal.
• As does Mrs. Mills' comment that Lydia is "older than she looks". Of course she is, having been dead over 50 years.
• Not to mention Mrs. Mills almost gives the game away when referring to her old employers: "We'll always be grateful for the way they..." The fact that she trails off might imply that the previous occupants of the house looked after them while they suffered from tuberculosis; or that she's just grateful they buried them on the grounds.
• The unsettling way Anne puts her mother on edge by breathing angrily - in short, sharp bursts. Whyever would Grace be disturbed by the sound of her child gasping for breath? Why would she tell her "Stop breathing like that! Stop breathing"?
• There's also the fog seen throughout the film, and is mentioned a fair amount by Grace and Mrs. Mills. At one point, Grace mentions how the fog has never lasted this long. Later, when it starts to become clear that there are more to the servants than meets the eye, Mrs. Mills and Mr. Tuttle have a brief discussion about the fog when Grace leaves the house to try to find the local priest. "Oh yes... the fog, of course." It could therefore be theorised that this fog does not exist in the world of the living, but only in the world of the dead. The fact that it's bright and sunny as the living people leave seems to confirm this..
• Grace's religious fundamentalism makes a lot of sense when you consider that she interpreted her and her children allegedly continuing to live after she killed them all in a psychotic episode as a miracle of God. Although, after The Reveal, it turns into in-universe Fridge Horror for Grace as it makes her question everything she preached about God and the afterlife.
• Grace discovers the book of the dead and asks Mrs. Mills how people can be so superstitious. Mrs. Mills's response is that "Grief over the death of a loved one can lead people to do the strangest things", but the look she gives Grace is oddly pointed and almost understanding. This makes more sense when you discover that Grace killed her children and then herself, likely driven to madness by the grief of finding out her husband was never coming home from war.

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