The Other - Plot

Plot

It's a seemingly idyllic summer in 1935, and identical twins Niles and Holland Perry play around the bucolic family farm. Holland is an amoral mischief maker, though sympathetic Niles is often caught in their shenanigans. Niles carries a Prince Albert tobacco tin with several secret trinkets, including the Perry family ring, which came down from their grandfather, and something mysteriously wrapped in wax paper. He asks Holland to "take them back," but Holland insists "I gave them to you, they're yours now." Their cousin Russell finds the boys in the forbidden apple cellar, and promises to snitch on them.

Their mother is a recluse in her upstairs bedroom, grieving over the recent death of the boys' father in the apple cellar. Grandmother Ada, a Russian emigrant, dotes on Niles, and has taught him a psychic ability to project himself outside of his body, for example in a bird; this ability she calls "the great game."

As the summer progresses, Holland appears to play some deadly practical jokes. A pitchfork left hidden in some straw in the floor of the hayloft takes the life of their sneering cousin Russell (he leaps from the upper loft onto it) before he can betray their secret hideaway in the apple cellar. A frightening magic trick for nearby spinster Mrs. Rowe causes her to have a fatal heart attack. After Russell's funeral, Niles' mother finds the ring, and the severed finger that is wrapped in wax paper. That night she demands Niles to tell her how he has taken possession of father's ring. "Holland gave it to me," he answers. She's shocked, and asks him when he gave it to Niles. "In the parlor, after our birthday," he answers. Holland appears, whispering, "Give it back!" After a struggle on the handing over the ring, she falls down the stairs and is rendered partially paralyzed.

Ada finds Holland's harmonica at Mrs. Rowe's house after her body is discovered. Finding Niles in church, transfixed by the image of "The Angel of a Better Day," she asks Niles about Mrs. Rowe, and he identifies Holland as the culprit. Ada drags Niles to the family graveyard and demands that Niles face the truth: Holland has been dead since their birthday in March, when he fell down the well. He was thought to have been buried with his father's ring, which, of course, is in Niles' possession. At home, Ada blames herself for teaching Niles "the game," but insists that he not play it anymore. But Niles continues to talk with Holland. Holland helps Niles to remember how he got his father's ring: Holland insisted that he cut his finger off while he lay in his casket in the parlor. In the stairway, Ada hears Niles whispering.

More tragedy strikes the family. During a storm, Rider and Torrie's newborn baby is kidnapped, a copycat of the recent Lindbergh tragedy. (News about the trial is seen in a newspaper, and Niles has a crayon portrait of Bruno Hauptmann in his bedroom.) As the adults mount a search for the baby, Niles sneaks off to the barn. Ada suspects that Niles knows more than he's letting on. When she discovers Niles in the barn, pleading for Holland to tell him where the baby is, she fears that Niles is beyond hope. She insists that he, Niles, has done all these things, but he refuses to believe her. The baby is found, drowned in one of Mr. Angelini's pickle barrels, and they apprehend the (innocent) handyman. Returning to the barn and shutting the door, Ada hears Niles in the apple cellar where the boys like to hide, whispering with Holland. She empties a can of gasoline into the apple cellar, and, clutching an oil lantern, dives into the cellar, starting a cataclysmic fire.

As autumn begins, the ruins of the barn are being cleared. The camera zooms in on a padlock that has been cut open with a bolt-cutter. We find that in spite of the fire, Niles is alive and well. His mother is a catatonic invalid, Ada has died in the barn fire, and no one knows Niles's terrible secret.