FrightFest review – The Other People
Chad McClarnon’s The Other People – which he co-wrote with Trey McClarnon – opens with a ‘based on a true story’ title, though it’s notably short on back-up documentation and you get a sense that while there have been a scattering of cases along these lines the tradition of the sort of crime which is featured here is stronger in fiction … there have been enough ‘hider in the house’ films to program a film festival … including (of course) Hider in the House, plus Hangman, Bad Ronald, Housebound, The House That Mary Bought, Through the Eyes of a Killer, Two Pigeons, I See You, etc.
By now, you know the drill – a family move into a spaceous home and start noticing little things (objects moved, supplies running out, strange noises, creaks, breakages, missing socks) the audience twigs straight off that someone else is living in the house, concealed in spaces in the walls, attics or unused rooms. The Other People isn’t quite that story, and indeed veers into the doppelganging of Us as the norms find their assumption of ownership challenged by a sub-culture or separate society of human hermit crabs … who are also murderous. William Marsh (Bryce Johnson), a widowed professor who’s a bit of a drip, remarries dance teacher Rachel (Lyndie Greenwood), who has a connection with William’s understandably glum little daughter Abby (Valentina Lucido). They settle in a home on the quiet street, and their ideal life starts to fray. A neighbour (Ashley Crow) is living in a trailer on her front lawn, having abandoned her house … to whom or what? William is drawn to his smitten assistant Emily (Quinnlan Ashe) in a soap opera subplot which doesn’t quite go anywhere … mostly because McClarnon opts to go for some extremely ruthless plot developments.
Early on, we see one of the shadowpeople (Hank Quillen) torturing a child (Brayden Mohr) – though another of the tribe (Liz Atwater) seems to object. Emily keeps talking about ‘Eric’, who William and Rachel take to be her imaginary friend – though he eats cake and sits quietly watching public domain Vincent Price movies with the family late at night. She’s also so terrified of Eric’s abuser that she keeps insisting on sleeping with her father, putting a damper on the relatively new couple’s sex life. Then, without getting overly explicit, the film depicts a truly shocking, appalling act of callous violence which puts an end to its chances as a shuddery fun horror – and takes it into other areas, possibly (as in Us) with strained social significance. Even if it’s a little awkward in the scripting, it’s very well acted – especially by the women in the cast, who all have nonstereotype roles – and conjures up a genuine feel of dread and transgression … with an epilogue montage which suggests this wasn’t a story about a family and a contested house but about unhealable rifts in America itself.
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