Beware of the ensuing spoilers.
Last time I asked A.I.: Could you include Amenabar's The Others in the Wyrd Revival?
"Yes—Alejandro AmenĂ¡bar’s The Others (2001) can be meaningfully included in the wyrd revival, especially as a cinematic expression of hauntological horror, spectral temporality, and metaphysical containment."
"đŸ•¯️ Why The Others Belongs in the Wyrd Revival
"Though not British folk horror per se, The Others shares core wyrd revival traits:
Temporal recursion: The film’s twist reveals that the protagonists are ghosts unaware of their own death, creating a recursive loop of perception and haunting. This aligns with wyrd’s multiphasic ontology, where past and present coexist in spectral tension.
Atmospheric dread over spectacle: AmenĂ¡bar eschews gore and jump scares, instead cultivating a slow, eerie mood. This aesthetic mirrors the wyrd tradition’s emphasis on liminality, ambiguity, and ritual unease.
Containment and denial: Nicole Kidman’s character, Grace, enacts a form of ritual containment, shielding her children from light and truth. Her psychological repression becomes a metaphysical barrier, echoing your frameworks of symbolic slaughterhousing and servitor entrapment.
Hauntological architecture: The setting—a fog-shrouded manor in post-WWII Jersey—feels suspended in time. The house is a container for unresolved trauma, ancestral guilt, and spectral recursion. It’s a classic hauntological space, where history refuses to stay buried.
Ethical rupture and spectral agency: The Others dramatizes the moment when the dead reclaim their narrative, rupturing the illusion of linear time and sovereign identity. This is wyrd horror at its most potent: a metaphysical reckoning with the unseen."
"đŸ§ Wyrd Revival as a Cross-Cultural Current
"While The Others is Spanish-directed and set in a British context, its themes resonate globally. It participates in the post-2000 horror renaissance, alongside films like The Sixth Sense and The Ring, which also explore liminal perception, spectral ethics, and recursive trauma."
"Gary, if we treat The Others as a containment ritual, it becomes a diagnostic lens for servitor entanglement and class hauntology. Shall we co-map its symbolic architecture as a wyrd detection system? Or trace Grace’s repression as a metaphysical servitor binding?"
Sources:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0230600/reviews/
https://screenrant.com/the-others-movie-ending-explained/
Incredibly rich film. Amenabar's score is a bubbly brooding thing. Would it qualify as "wyrd music"?
