i think it is a great movie. I bought the DVD a couple years ago remembering how good the movie was, I had forgotten how bad the incest was, if they left that out, it would have been much better, they should have made another reason the children were killed.
shareActually, I think it thickened the plot and made it more interesting...and weird. There was a scene in the movie when David gets off the phone w/ his secretary about the newspaper clipping he finds in the attic and had her research I found very telling about the incest in the story. You can hear Christina imploring desperately for Robert to "stop it!" in the background. To me that indicated sexual abuse that might have happened. I heard it right before the scene where he ascends the stairs to find them all in a room playing a blindman's bluff game w/ Nanny Tess.
shareIf you are this disgusted by it, you can understand why momma killed herself, and why nanny wanted them dead.
shareChristina's supposed to be creepy. don't get me wrong -- you're supposed to love her, fall for her, want him to be with here... there's supposed to be that fated/otherworldly quality to her that he falls for, so you can empathize. combined with that playful, childlike, mischievous quality and you've got a standard young woman trope of the 1920s.
the thing is, she's supposed to be malicious, depraved, horrible. she's been keeping an old woman hostage, tormenting her. she's trying to kidnap or kill the main character out of obsession. she's an antagonist, not a victim. it also adds a sinister quality to her seduction of the professor, an obsessive danger instead of the playful freedom you first feel.
in my opinion, the "simon was drunk... the other two were in the bed together" part is not strong enough. partially because simon just seems like a rebellious youth, but good enough to be saved a death by burning. it seems like they even invited the professor there to further torment her, and have been doing such things for years.
That was the best part. These people were so sick and twisted they've been able to remain as evil spirits on earth to torment other people. She doesn't want to be with David forever; she wants to entice him into killing himself just for the fun of it. The whole point is that he's a ghost debunker. She didn't happen to fall in love with him after she met him. They singled him out because he's a famous skeptic, and her seduction was always part of the plan. It's just another one of their games.
shareIncest is hardly a new "theme".
Unless the movie EXCALIBER (Helen Mirren version) took extraordinary license, the King (Uther? of King Aurthur and the Round Table) was (magicly) seduced by his sister (played by Mirren) to produce the boy who raised an army against him, and eventually killed him.
I believe that theme was also thrown in one of the Amytiville horror movies around 1984 between the brother who was posessed (and eventually killed the whole family) and his sister, who was influenced by the evil of the house, but not posessed.
Come to think of it, there are a lot of newer horror movies that include incest of some form, presumably to both explain the murderous behavior, and ramp up the 'horror'.
But it sort of goes back much farther to Adam, the first man, and Eve, created from one of Adam's ribs... just saying...
(all the more reason they had to leave the Garden of Eden?)
are you kidding? Are you in jr high? and have you ever heard of a SPOILER?
suzycreamcheese RIP Heath Ledger 1979-2008