Once Crowe earns his trust, Cole eventually confides in him that he "sees dead people that walk around like regular people". Though Crowe at first thinks Cole is delusional, he eventually believes that Cole is telling the truth and that Vincent may have had the same ability. He suggests to Cole that he should try to find a purpose for his gift by communicating with the ghosts, perhaps to aid them with their unfinished business on Earth. Cole at first does not want to, because the ghosts terrify him, but he soon decides to try it. One is an overworked wife abused by her husband who slit her wrists; another that tries to hurt Cole is only heard as a voice who starts pleading calmly to Cole to let him out of the dark cupboard because he's suffocating, then yells at Cole that he didn't steal "the Master's horse" and threatens to attack Cole if he doesn't obey. The third ghost appears very briefly; a boy a bit older than Cole asks him to come into the room, to find his father's gun. The boy turns around to show that he has a large gunshot exit wound on the back of his head.
Cole finally talks to one of the ghosts, a very ill girl who appears in his bedroom, who promptly vomits in his tent. He finds where the girl, Kyra Collins (Mischa Barton), lived and goes to her house during her funeral reception. Kyra died after a prolonged illness and funeral guests note that Kyra's younger sister is starting to get sick, too. Kyra's ghost appears and gives Cole a box, which is opened to reveal a videotape. When Cole gives it to Kyra's father, the videotape shows Kyra's mother putting floor cleaner fluid in Kyra's food while she cared for Kyra during her illness. The continual illness may indicate slow poisoning as a case of Munchausen syndrome by proxy.[2]
Cole confesses his secret to his mother, Lynn (Toni Collette). Although his mother at first does not believe him, Cole soon tells Lynn that her own mother once went to see her perform in a dance recital one night when she was a child, and that Lynn was not aware of this because her mother stayed in the back of the audience where she could not be seen. He also tells her that the answer to a question she asked when alone at her mother's grave, "Do I make you proud?", was "Every day". Lynn tearfully accepts this as the truth.
Crowe returns to his home, where he finds his wife asleep on the couch with the couple's wedding video playing, not for the first time. As she sleeps, Anna's hand releases Malcolm's wedding ring (which he suddenly discovers he has not been wearing), revealing the surprise ending of the film: Crowe himself was actually killed by Vincent and was unknowingly dead the entire time he was working with Cole. Due to Cole's efforts, Crowe's unfinished business— rectifying his failure to understand Vincent— is finally complete. Recalling Cole's advice, Crowe speaks to his sleeping wife and fulfills the second reason he returned, saying she was "never second", and that he loves her. Letting her live her own life, he is free to leave the world of the living.
The Devil’s Backbone (2001)
A boy named Carlos (Fernando Tielve) arrives at an orphanage, thinking that he will be staying there temporarily, until his father returns from the Spanish Civil War. In the center of its courtyard, there is a bomb which was defused. Carlos then sees a ghost of a boy in the kitchen doorway who disappears shortly after. When he goes in to investigate, he is distracted by two orphans, Galvez and Owl, whom he befriends. He shows them his toys and comics, until Jaime (Íñigo Garcés), an older orphan, steals one of them. Carlos starts to fight with him but is distracted by the sight of his tutor and his bodyguard driving away without him. Although he doesn't know it, his father is dead, and he will be staying in the orphanage indefinitely. Dr. Casares (Federico Luppi), the assistant administrator, sympathizes with him. That night, in his bed, Carlos is distracted by noises, suggested to be a ghost. The alleged ghost knocks over a pitcher of water, which wakes the rest of the orphans. Carlos and Jaime dare each other to go into the kitchen and refill the water pitchers. Carlos wanders down a spiral staircase, where he hears the ghost, who tells him cryptically that many will die. He runs away, but Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega), a former orphan who now works at the orphanage, catches him.
The next day, Carlos does not reveal why he was out, which earns him Jaime's respect. However only when Carlos saves Jaime from drowning at the cost of having his face cut by Jacinto does Jaime's bullying of Carlos' cease. Jaime offers him a drawing and a piece of cake in return for the stolen comic book, to which Carlos refuses. When a long sigh is heard, an orphan mentions a ghost, and it is explained to Carlos that a boy named Santi (Junio Valverde) had disappeared on the same night the bomb was dropped. And since then, there has been a ghost haunting the orphanage. Jaime acts as if he does not believe in the ghost. Later on at night, Carlos sneaks out to the courtyard. He approaches the bomb and asks it to show him where Santi is. In response, a paper streamer on the bomb is caught by the wind and leads him to the ghost, but Carlos becomes scared, and runs away. The ghost follows him into the main building and corners Carlos at the end of a hallway. Frightened, he locks himself in a closet, where he sleeps that night. Later when Carlos looks in Jaime's sketchbook and finds a picture of Santi bleeding he then realizes that Jaime knows more than he's telling. Jacinto has been in the orphanage for a long time, and despises the place. His girlfriend Conchita (Irene Visedo), on whom Jaime has a crush, has plans with him to get married. He is aware of the existence of a stash of gold at the orphanage, and he uses sexual favors to steal keys from Carmen (Marisa Paredes), the head of the orphanage to open the safe. Carmen loves Dr. Casares, though she is unwilling to acknowledge this. Dr. Casares is embarrassed by his impotence and it seems to inhibit his confidence relating to the physical aspect of his love. Jacinto is unsuccessful in stealing the right key to the safe.
On a trip to town, Dr. Casares witnesses Carlos' tutor and his bodyguard being executed by the army. Dr. Casares plans to lead the orphans away from the orphanage, because of the rapidly escalating war. Jacinto demands the gold but is forced to leave at gunpoint. As the orphans and staff prepare to leave, Conchita discovers Jacinto preparing to blow up the safe. She threatens him with a shotgun, he taunts her, and she accidentally shoots him in the shoulder. In the ensuing melee, Jacinto succeeds in burning much of the orphanage down before leaving. The explosion kills Carmen and many orphans, leaving many of the survivors badly wounded, including Dr. Casares. Dr. Casares resolves to take up guard duty over the remains of the orphanage, waiting at the window with a shotgun for the return of Jacinto.
The night after the explosion, Jaime tells Carlos that he was present when Santi was killed. They had been collecting slugs near the cistern, a sort of man-made pool of water in the cellar under the kitchen. Santi hears a noise and discovers Jacinto trying to break into the safe. Santi runs back into the cellar and Jacinto follows. Jacinto tries to threaten Santi; when they struggle, Jacinto slams him against a support column. Santi suffers a serious head wound and begins to go into shock. Jacinto enters a state of panic and rushes off. In Jacinto's absence, Jaime comes out of his hiding place and tries his best to comfort the mortally wounded Santi, the scene being revealed to the audience as the same one that was foreshadowed at the very beginning of the film. Jaime then hears Jacinto returning, and runs off. Jacinto, unaware of Jaime's presence, ties weights to Santi's body and pushes his still-alive body in the cistern, where he drowns.
The second day after the explosion, Dr. Casares succumbs to his wounds, but before dying vows to the boys that he will not leave them. Meanwhile, Jacinto is en route back to the orphanage with two co-conspirators. While driving, he meets an exhausted Conchita, who has walked through the night attempting to enlist aid in the town. Jacinto stops the vehicle and demands that Conchita apologize for shooting him. Conchita refuses, stating proudly that she is no longer afraid of him. Jacinto stabs her in the stomach, killing her. Leaving her body on the side of the road, Jacinto and his friends make their way to the orphanage, where they imprison the surviving orphans and then set about looking for the gold. Jacinto and his accomplices manage to open the damaged safe where Jacinto saw the gold hidden, but are despondent when it is revealed to be empty. Angry, the conspirators abandon Jacinto, taking the car and leaving him at the orphanage. However, in his despair Jacinto catches a glint of light in the rubble, and finds the gold hidden in Carmen's prosthetic leg, half-buried in debris.
Meanwhile, the orphans rationalize that they will be killed once Jacinto finds the gold. They sharpen sticks with shards of glass as makeshift weapons, and Galvez volunteers to climb out of a small, high window in order to open the locked door from the outside. Unfortunately, Galvez severely injures his ankle after he slips and falls from the window and is unable to move. Very much to the surprise of the other boys, the door suddenly unlocks and opens, seemingly of its own accord. The boys quickly exit and come to the aid of Galvez, who tells them that it was Dr. Casares who opened the door and that the doctor told him that the boys must be brave and protect one another. The boys find Dr. Casares' monogrammed pocket square in the hallway, and move to confront Jacinto. The boys cleverly lure Jacinto into the cellar, and distract him while Jaime stabs him in the chest. The boys then push the wounded Jacinto into the same pool of water where he drowned Santi. Weighed down by the gold in his pockets and dragged down by the ghost of Santi, Jacinto drowns. The surviving children then leave the orphanage, watched over silently by the ghost of Dr. Casares.
Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki), in the midst of a divorce, moves to a run-down apartment with her daughter, Ikuko (Rio Kanno). She enrolls her daughter in a nearby kindergarten and in order to win custody of her daughter, starts working as a proofreader, a job she held years ago before she was married. The ceiling of the apartment has a leak, which worsens on a daily basis. Matsubara complains to the janitor of the apartment, an old man, but the janitor does nothing to fix the leak. She then tries to go to the floor just above her apartment to find out the root of the leak, and discovers that the apartment is locked.
Strange events then happen repeatedly: a red bag with a bunny on the front reappears no matter how often Yoshimi tries to dispose of it. Hair is found in tap water. Yoshimi gets glimpses of a mysterious long-haired girl who is of similar age to her daughter. Yoshimi discovers that the upstairs apartment, the source of the leak, was formerly the home of a girl named Mitsuko Kawai (Mirei Oguchi), who was of similar age to her daughter. She had attended the same kindergarten Ikuko now attends. Mitsuko was abandoned by her mother and vanished more than a year ago.
Yoshimi finds her missing daughter one day in the apartment upstairs, which has walls pouring with water with the entire apartment flooded ankle-deep. Convinced something eerie is happening, she decides to move, but her lawyer convinces her that her eyes may be playing tricks on her and that moving now would weaken her position greatly in her divorce.
One evening, after yet another strange occurrence involving the red bag, Yoshimi is drawn to the roof of the building, and while examining the huge water tank she notices that it was last inspected – and thus opened – over a year ago, on the day Mitsuko was last reported seen. She comes to the horrific realization via a vision that Mitsuko had fallen into the tank while trying to retrieve her red bag, and was thus drowned.
Meanwhile, Ikuko, left alone in the apartment, attempts to turn off the bath tap, which has started to spurt filthy water. Mitsuko's spirit emerges from the flooded bathtub and attempts to drown her.
Yoshimi finds Ikuko unconscious on the bathroom floor. Intending to escape, she rushes into the elevator, fleeing apparently from the apparition of Mitsuko. But as the elevator door closes she sees that the figure pursuing her is in fact her own daughter – with short hair – and realizes she is carrying Mitsuko, who, gripping her neck, claims Yoshimi as mother in a torrent of water. Yoshimi realizes that Mitsuko won't let her go and with Ikuko looking on in tears, Yoshimi sacrifices herself by staying on in the elevator to appease Mitsuko's spirit and pretending to be Mitsuko's mother. The elevator ascends and Ikuko follows, but when the doors open, a flood of murky brown water rushes out and nobody emerges.
The end of the film shows Ikuko, now sixteen (Asami Mizukawa), re-visiting the abandoned block. She notices that her old apartment looks oddly clean and seems occupied. She then sees her mother, and they have a conversation. Her mother affirms that as long as Ikuko is all right, she is happy. Ikuko then pleads to stay with her mother, whom she thinks is alive, and though Yoshimi smiles, she tells Ikuko that that would be impossible. Sensing someone behind her, Ikuko warily turns, but sees no one (the audience though sees Mitsuko for a split second). When she turns back, Yoshimi has also disappeared. As she leaves, Ikuko realizes that her mother's spirit has been watching over her.
Some time after the drowning of their young daughter, Christine (Sharon Williams), in a tragic accident at their English country home, John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) and his wife, Laura (Julie Christie), are staying in Venice where John has been contracted by a bishop (Massimo Serato) to restore an ancient church. Laura encounters two elderly sisters at a restaurant where she and John are dining, one of whom is blind and claims to be psychic and in contact with the Baxters' deceased daughter. The blind sister, Heather (Hilary Mason), tells Laura she can see Christine and describes the attire she was wearing at the time of the accident, and that Christine is happy. Shaken, Laura returns to her table, where she faints.
Laura is taken to hospital, where she later tells John what the sisters told her. John is sceptical but pleasantly surprised by the positive change in Laura's demeanour. Later in the evening after returning from the hospital, John and Laura engage in passionate sexual intercourse. Afterwards, they go out to dinner where they get lost and briefly become separated. John catches a glimpse of what looks like a small child (Adelina Poerio) wearing a red coat similar to the one Christine was wearing when she died.
The next day, Laura meets with the sisters, who hold a séance to try to contact Christine. She returns to the hotel and tells John that Christine has said he is in danger and must leave Venice. John loses his temper with Laura, but that night they receive a telephone call informing them that their son (Nicholas Salter) has been injured in an accident. Laura departs for England, while John stays on to complete the restoration. Under the assumption that Laura is in England, John is shocked when later that day he spots her on a barge that is part of a funeral cortege, accompanied by the two sisters. Concerned about his wife's mental state and with reports of a serial killer at large in Venice, he reports Laura's disappearance to the police. The inspector (Renato Scarpa) investigating the killings is suspicious of John and has him followed.
After conducting a futile search for Laura and the sisters—in which he again sees the child-like figure in the red coat—John contacts his son's boarding school to enquire about his condition, only to discover Laura is already at the school. After speaking to her to confirm she really is in England, a bewildered John returns to the police station to inform the police he has found his wife. In the meantime the police have found the sisters and brought them in for questioning, so an apologetic John offers to escort Heather back to her hotel to rejoin her sister, Wendy (Clelia Matania).
On returning to the hotel, Heather goes into a trance as John is leaving. On his way out, John catches another glimpse of the mysterious figure in red, and this time pursues it. Coming out of her trance, Heather beseeches her sister to go after John, sensing that something terrible is about to happen to him, but she is unable to catch up with him. Meanwhile, John has followed the elusive figure to a deserted palazzo, and having cornered it, realizes too late that the strange sightings he has been experiencing were premonitions of his own death. An old Dwarf woman (presumably the serial killer) takes out a large knife and slashes him in the throat.
The fishing town of Antonio Bay in California is about to celebrate its centennial. With preparations for the celebration underway, the centennial is also marked by a series of ominous events; as the witching hour strikes and the date of the town's centennial begins, various odd phenomena begin to happen all over the sleeping town (objects move by themselves, television sets turn themselves on, gas stations seemingly come to life, and all the public payphones ring simultaneously).
That same night, Father Malone, the town's priest, is in his study in the church when a large piece of stone falls from the wall revealing a cavity. Inside is an old journal, his grandfather's diary from a hundred years earlier. Father Malone removes the book from the wall and begins to read. The diary reveals that in 1880, six of the founders of Antonio Bay (including Malone's grandfather) deliberately sank and plundered a clipper ship named the Elizabeth Dane. The ship was owned by Blake, a wealthy man with leprosy who wanted to establish a colony near Antonio Bay. During a foggy night, the six conspirators lit a fire on the beach near treacherous rocks, and the crew of the ship, deceived by the false beacon, crashed into them. Everyone aboard the ship perished. The six conspirators were motivated both by greed and disgust at the notion of having a leper colony nearby. Antonio Bay and its church were then founded with the gold plundered from the ship.
A supernaturally glowing fog appears, spreading over the sea and moving against the wind. Three local fishermen are out at sea getting drunk when the fog covers their trawler. When two of them go on deck to investigate, they see a ghostly looking clipper ship pulling alongside their trawler. The mysterious fog contains the vengeful ghosts of Blake and the clipper ship's crew, who have come back on the hundredth anniversary of the shipwreck and the founding of the town to take the lives of six people (symbolic substitutes for the six conspirators). Two of the fishermen are attacked and slaughtered on deck, while the third is killed in the wheelhouse.
At the same time, town resident Nick Castle drives down a country road and picks up a young female hitchhiker named Elizabeth Solley. While the two drive towards town, the radio and headlights of Nick's truck start to fail and all the windows inexplicably shatter.
The following morning, local radio DJ Stevie Wayne is given a piece of driftwood, part of a board, that was found on the beach by her young son Andy. The wood is inscribed with the word "DANE". Intrigued by the object, Stevie keeps it and takes it with her to the lighthouse where she broadcasts her radio show from. Stevie sets the board down on top of a tape player that is playing, and while she is momentarily distracted, the board inexplicably begins to seep water. The water spreads and causes the tape player to short out. Suddenly, a mysterious man's voice emerges from the tape player swearing revenge, and the words "6 Must Die" appear on the wood before it bursts into flames. A shocked Stevie quickly extinguishes the fire, but then she sees that the board once again reads "DANE" and the tape player begins working normally again.
After locating the missing trawler, Nick and Elizabeth find the corpse of Dick Baxter with his eyes gouged out. The other two fishermen are nowhere to be found. The body is taken to the local coroner's office to be examined by Dr. Phibes, who is perplexed by the body's advanced state of decomposition considering Baxter died only hours earlier. Whilst Elizabeth is alone in the autopsy room with Baxter's corpse, the body becomes momentarily re-animated. It rises from the autopsy table and grabs Elizabeth. As Elizabeth screams, Nick and Phibes rush back into the autopsy room, where they see the corpse lifeless again on the floor. However, it appears to have scratched the number "3" into the floor with the scalpel. Baxter was the third victim to die.
While this is happening, Kathy Williams (the wife of one of the missing fishermen and one of the driving forces behind the town's centennial) and her assistant Sandy Fadel visit Father Malone to ask him to give the benediction at that night's ceremony. He reads to them from the journal and reveals to them how the town was founded on murder and their celebration would be honoring murderers (something the two women do not want to hear).
That evening, the Antonio Bay centennial celebration begins in the center of town. Kathy is told by the sheriff and Nick about her husband's disappearance, but insists on going on with her part in the ceremonies. At the same time, Dan, the local weatherman, calls Stevie at the radio station to tell her that another fog bank has appeared and is moving towards town. As they are talking, the fog gathers outside the weather station and Dan hears a knock at the door. Leaving Stevie on the phone while he goes to answer it, Dan is killed by the ghosts as Stevie listens in horror.
As Stevie continues her radio broadcast, the fog begins moving inland and neutralizes the town's phone and electricity lines. Using a back-up generator, Stevie begs her listeners to go to her house and save her son when she sees the fog closing in from her lighthouse vantage point. Nick and Elizabeth hear this on the car radio and go to help. Meanwhile, at Stevie's home, her son's babysitter, Mrs. Kobritz, is killed by the ghosts as the fog envelops the house. The ghosts then pursue Andy, but Nick arrives just in time to save him and they escape.
As the town's celebration comes to an end, Kathy and Sandy are driving home when they turn on the car radio and hear Stevie warning people about the dangerous fog that is sweeping through the town. Stevie advises everyone to go to the local church, which appears to be the only safe place. Nick, Elizabeth and Andy hear the same message and the group gather at the church. Once inside, they and Father Malone take refuge in a small back room as the fog begins to roll outside. Inside the room, Nick and Father Malone find a huge gold cross buried in the walls. The cross is made of the gold that was stolen from Blake and his people a hundred years earlier. As the ghosts of Blake and his crew begin to attack the church, Father Malone takes the gold cross out into the chapel. Knowing he is the offspring of one of the conspirators, Malone confronts Blake in an attempt to sacrifice himself and save everyone else.
Back at the lighthouse, two of the ghosts try to attack Stevie. She climbs onto the roof, but the ghosts follow and trap her.
Inside the church, Blake seizes the golden cross, which begins to emit an eerie glow. The church rumbles as the light emanating from the cross becomes brighter and brighter. Nick manages to pull Father Malone away from the cross only seconds before it disappears, along with Blake and his crew, in a blinding flash of light. The ghosts attacking Stevie on the roof of the lighthouse disappear as well, and the fog vanishes. Stevie gets back on air and warns the boats out at sea to watch out for the fog. Later that evening, Father Malone is alone in the church pondering why Blake did not kill him and thus take six lives. At that moment, the fog reappears inside the church along with Blake and his crew. As Father Malone turns to face him, Blake swings his sword at Father Malone's neck, decapitating him.
Eleanor "Nell" Lance (Julie Harris), Theodora "Theo" (Claire Bloom), and Luke Sanderson (Russ Tamblyn) accompany Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson) during an investigation into the paranormal. Markway believes that an old mansion with a sinister past called Hill House will provide him with the proof he seeks of the existence of the supernatural. Luke is the next in line to inherit the house, and is volunteered by the current owner to join Markway both as a sceptic and overseer. Nell and Theo are the only responders to an invitation Markway sent out to various people who had come in contact with the supernatural at some point in their lives. After the four meet up in Hill House, strange things begin to happen, most of which seem centered on Nell. She finds that she is both frightened of, and enjoys the attention the house affords her, and becomes drawn deeper and deeper in by the forces within the house.
The film is set in the British Crown Dependency of Jersey, in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Grace Stewart (Kidman) is a Catholic mother who lives with her two small children in a remote country house. The children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley), have an uncommon disease characterized by photosensitivity (a special feature on the DVD indicates the disease is xeroderma pigmentosum), so their lives are structured around a series of complex rules designed to protect them from inadvertent exposure to sunlight.
The new arrival of three servants at the house — an aging nanny and servant named Mrs. Bertha Mills (Fionnula Flanagan), an elderly gardener named Mr. Edmund Tuttle (Eric Sykes), and a young mute girl named Lydia (Elaine Cassidy) — coincides with a number of odd events, and Grace begins to fear that they are not alone. Anne draws pictures of four people: a man, a woman, a boy called Victor, and an old woman, all of whom she says she has seen in the house. A piano is heard from inside a locked room when no one is inside. Grace finds and examines a "book of the dead," which shows mourning portraitstaken in the 19th century of recently deceased corpses. Every time Grace enters and exits the room, the door closes, but while she tries to figure out why, the door slams in her face, knocking her to the floor. Grace tries hunting down the "intruders" with a shotgun but cannot find them. She scolds her daughter for believing in ghosts — until she hears them herself. Eventually, convincing herself that something unholy is in the house, she runs out in the fog to get the local priest to bless the house. Meanwhile, the servants, led by Mrs. Mills, are clearly up to something of their own. The gardener buries a headstone under autumn leaves, and Mrs. Mills listens faithfully to Anne's allegations against her mother.
Out in the forest, Grace loses herself in the heavy fog, but she miraculously discovers her husband Charles (Christopher Eccleston), who she thought had been killed in the war, and brings him back to the house. Charles is distant during the one day he spends in the house, and Mrs. Mills is heard telling Mr. Tuttle, "I do not think he knows where he is." Grace later sees the old woman from Anne's drawing dressed up like her daughter. Grace says "You are not my daughter!" and attacks her. However, she finds that she has actually attacked her daughter instead. Anne refuses to be near her mother afterward, while Grace swears she saw the old woman. Mrs. Mills tells Anne that she too has seen the people, but they cannot yet tell the mother because Grace will not accept what she is not ready for. Charles is stunned when Anne tells him the things her mother did to her. Charles says he must leave for the front and disappears again. After Charles leaves, Anne continues to see things, including Victor's whole family and the old woman. Grace breaks down to Mrs. Mills, who claims that "sometimes the world of the dead gets mixed up with the world of the living."
That night, Anne and Nicholas sneak out of the house to find their father, and stumble across the hidden graves. They find that the graves belong to the servants. At the same time, Grace goes to the servants' quarters and finds a photograph from the book of the dead and is horrified to see that it is of the three servants. The servants appear and chase after the children, who make it back into the house just as Grace emerges to hold off the servants with a shotgun. They then say that they had died of tuberculosis more than 50 years before. The children run upstairs and hide, but are found by the strange old woman. Downstairs, the servants continue talking to Grace, telling her that the living and the dead have to learn to live together. Upstairs, Anne and Nicholas discover the old woman is acting as a medium in a séance with Victor's parents. It is then that they learn the awful truth: the real ghosts are none other than Anne, Nicholas, and their mother, who is believed to have killed them in a fit of psychosis before committingsuicide. Grace loses her temper and supernaturally attacks the visitors. This sequence is quickly intercut with scenes from both Grace's viewpoint and the family's.
One morning, Grace wakes to the children's screams: all of the curtains in the house have disappeared, as Anne had said they might. When the servants refuse to help look for them, Grace realizes that they are somehow involved. Hiding the children from the light, she banishes the servants from the house.
The truth is finally clear to Grace and the audience. She breaks down with the children and remembers what happened just before the arrival of their new servants. Stricken with grief for her missing husband and increasingly frustrated by living in isolation, she went insane, smothered her children with a pillow and then, realizing what she had done, shot herself. When she awoke, she assumed that God had granted her family a miracle. Grace and the children realize that Charles is also dead, but he is not aware of it. Mrs. Mills appears and informs Grace that they will learn to get along, and sometimes they won't even notice the living people who inhabit their house. She also informs them that since the children no longer have their mortal bodies they are no longer sensitive to light, and for the first time the children freely enjoy the sunlight coming through the windows. From the window, Grace and her children look outside as Victor's family moves out.
Steven and Diane Freeling live a quiet life in a California suburb called Cuesta Verde, where Steven is a successful realtor and Diane is a housewife who cares for their children Dana, Robbie, and Carol Anne. Carol Anne awakens one night and begins conversing with the family's television set, which has started transmitting static following a sign-off. The following night, while the Freelings are sleeping, Carol Anne becomes fixated on the television set as it transmits static again. Suddenly, an apparition jumps out of the television screen and quickly leaps into the wall and vanishes, creating a violent earthquake within the house in the process, to which Carol Anne announces "They're here."
Bizarre events begin to occur the following day, such as glasses and utensils that spontaneously break or bend and furniture that moves on its own accord. The phenomena seem benign at first, but quickly begin to intensify. One night, a gnarled backyard tree becomes animated and grabs Robbie through the bedroom window. While Diane and Steven rescue Robbie, Carol Anne is sucked through a portal in her closet. The Freelings realize she has been taken when they hear her voice emanating from a television set.
A group of parapsychologists from UC Irvine—Dr. Lesh, Ryan and Marty—come to the Freeling house to investigate and determine that the Freelings are experiencing a poltergeist intrusion. They discover that the disturbances involve more than just one ghost. Steven also finds out in an exchange with his boss, Lewis Teague, that Cuesta Verde is built where a cemetery was once located.
After Dana and Robbie are sent away for their safety, Dr. Lesh and Ryan call in Tangina Barrons, a spiritual medium. Tangina states that the spirits are lingering in a different "sphere of consciousness" and are not at rest. Attracted to Carol Anne's life force, the spirits are distracted from the real "Light" that has come for them. Tangina then adds that among the ghosts inhabiting the house, there is also a demon known as the "Beast", who has Carol Anne under restraint in an effort to manipulate the other spirits.
The assembled group discovers that the entrance to the other dimension is through the children's bedroom closet, while the exit is through the living room ceiling. As the group attempts to rescue Carol Anne, Diane passes through the entrance tied by a rope that has been threaded through both portals. Diane manages to retrieve Carol Anne, and they both drop to the floor from the ceiling unconscious. As they recover, Tangina proclaims afterward that the house is now "clean".
Shortly thereafter, the Freelings prepare to move elsewhere. During their last night in the house, Steven attends a meeting with Teague and Dana goes on a date, leaving Diane, Robbie, and Carol Anne alone in the house. The Beast then ambushes Diane and the children, attempting a second kidnapping. Diane and the children escape the house to discover coffins and rotting corpses erupting out from the ground throughout the neighborhood. As Steven and Dana return home to the mayhem, Steven realizes that rather than relocating the cemetery for the development of Cuesta Verde, Teague merely had the headstones moved and the bodies left behind, desecrating the burial grounds. The Freelings flee Cuesta Verde while the house itself implodes into another dimension, to the astonishment of onlookers. The family checks into a hotel for the night, and Steven shoves the room's television outside onto the balcony.
Two teenagers, Masami (Hitomi Satō) and Tomoko (Yūko Takeuchi) talk about a videotape recorded by a boy in Izu which is fabled to bear a curse that kills the viewer seven days after watching. Tomoko then reveals that a week ago, she and three of her friends watched a weird tape and received a call after watching it. Unnervingly similar to the storied videotape, Masami realizes that Tomoko was fated to die. After some unsettling moments, Tomoko is killed by an unseen force with Masami having the horror of watching.
Some days later, Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima), a reporter investigating the popularity of the video curse among teenagers, discovers that her niece, Tomoko and her three other friends mysteriously died at the same time on the same night with their faces twisted in a rictus of fear. She also discovers that Masami, the girl who was with Tomoko when she died, became insane and is now in a mental hospital. After stumbling upon Tomoko's photos from the past week, Reiko finds out that the four teenagers stayed in a rental cabin in Izu. Eventually, she flips to a photo of the teens with their faces blurred and distorted.
Later, Reiko goes to Izu and finds an unlabeled tape in the reception room of the rental cottage where the teenagers stayed. Watching the tape inside Cabin B4, Reiko sees a series of seemingly unrelated disturbing images. As soon as the tape is over, Reiko sees a reflection in the television, and as she turns to see nobody behind her she receives a phone call, a realization of the tell-tale videotape curse. She now assumes that she has a week to live.
On the first day, Reiko enlists the help of her ex-husband, Ryūji Takayama (Hiroyuki Sanada). They take a picture of Reiko and find her face blurred in the photograph, further confirming that Reiko really was cursed. Ryūji then watches the tape, against Asakawa's objections. A day later, Reiko creates a copy for Ryūji for them to study. They find a hidden message embedded within the tape saying that "if you keep on doing 'shōmon', the 'bōkon' will come for you." The message is in a form of dialect from Izu Ōshima Island. The two sail for Ōshima (after Asakawa's son Yoichi watches the videotape) and discover the history of the great psychic Shizuko Yamamura,whose astounding supernatural power was accused to be a fraud. Yamamura commited suicide for which and the power passed on to her daughter also made her distrusted by the world and ultimately, killed by her father.
With only a day left, Reiko and Ryūji discover that Shizuko's lost daughter, Sadako Yamamura, must have psionically made the videotape. Determined, the two go back to Izu with the assumption that Sadako is dead and it was her vengeful spirit that killed the teenagers. The duo then uncover a well under Cabin B4 and realize, through a vision, that Sadako's father killed her and threw her into the well. They try to empty the well and find Sadako's body in an attempt to appease her spirit. Reiko finds Sadako's body. When nothing happens to her, they believe that the curse is broken.
All seems fine until the next day when Ryūji is at his home and his TV switches on by itself showing the image of a well. He stares in horror as the ghost of Sadako crawls out of the well and out of Ryūji's TV set and frightens him into a state of shock, therefore killing him via cardiac arrest. Desperate to find a cure to save her son, Reiko realized what she had done that Ryūji had not saved her---copying the tape and showing it to Ryuji.
Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) arrives at the Overlook Hotel to interview for the position of winter caretaker, with the aim of using the hotel's solitude to work on his writing. The hotel itself is built on the site of an Indian burial ground and becomes completely snowed in during the long winters. Manager Stuart Ullman (Barry Nelson) warns him that a previous caretaker got cabin fever and killed his family and himself. Jack’s son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), has ESP and has had a terrifying premonition about the hotel. Jack's wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), tells a visiting doctor that Danny has an imaginary friend called Tony and that Jack has given up drinking because he had hurt Danny's arm after a binge.
The family arrives at the hotel on closing day and is given a tour. The African-American chef Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers) surprises Danny by telepathically offering him ice cream. He explains to Danny that his grandmother and he shared this telepathic ability, which he calls "shining." Danny asks if there is anything to be afraid of in the hotel, particularly Room 237. Hallorann tells Danny that the hotel itself has a "shine" to it along with many memories, not all of which are good. He tells Danny to stay out of Room 237.
A month passes; while Jack's writing project goes nowhere, Danny and Wendy explore the hotel's hedge maze. Wendy becomes concerned about the phone lines being out due to the heavy snowfall and Danny has more frightening visions. As more time passes, Jack becomes frustrated, starts acting strangely, and becomes prone to violent outbursts. Danny’s curiosity about Room 237 finally gets the better of him when he sees the room's door open. Later, Danny shows up injured and visibly traumatized, causing Wendy to accuse Jack of abusing Danny. Jack wanders into the hotel’s Gold Room where he meets a ghostly bartender named Lloyd (Joe Turkel) who serves him bourbon on the rocks. Jack complains to the bartender about his marriage to Wendy. Wendy later tells Jack that Danny told her a "crazy woman in one of the rooms" was responsible for his injuries. Jack investigates Room 237 where he encounters the ghost of a dead woman, but tells Wendy he saw nothing. Wendy and Jack argue about whether Danny should be removed from the hotel and Jack returns to the Gold Room, now filled with ghosts having a costume party. Here, he meets who he believes is the ghost of the previous caretaker, Grady (Philip Stone), who tells Jack that he must "correct" his wife and child.
Meanwhile, in Florida, Hallorann has a premonition that something is wrong at the hotel and takes a flight back to Colorado to investigate. Danny starts calling out "redrum" frantically and goes into a trance, now referring to himself as "Tony." While searching for Jack, Wendy discovers his typewriter; he has been typing endless pages of manuscript repeating "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" formatted in various styles. She is confronted by Jack, who threatens her before she knocks him unconscious with a baseball bat. She manages to drag him into the kitchen and lock him in the pantry, but this does not solve her larger problem; she and Danny are trapped at the hotel since Jack has sabotaged the hotel's two-way radio and snowcat. Later, Jack converses through the pantry door with Grady, who then unlocks the door, releasing him.
Danny writes "REDRUM" in lipstick on the bathroom door. When Wendy sees this in the bedroom mirror, the letters spell out "MURDER".[6] Jack begins to chop through the door leading to his family's living quarters with a fire axe. Wendy frantically sends Danny out through the bathroom window, but cannot get through it herself. Jack then starts chopping through the bathroom door as Wendy screams in horror; he leers through the hole he has made, shouting "Here's Johnny!", but backs off after Wendy slashes his hand with a butcher knife. Hearing the engine of the snowcat Hallorann has borrowed to get up the mountain, Jack leaves the room. He kills Hallorann in the lobby and pursues Danny into the hedge maze. Wendy runs through the hotel looking for Danny, encountering several ghosts along the way, and a huge cascade of blood. Meanwhile, Danny walks backwards in his own tracks and leaps behind a corner, covering his tracks with snow to mislead Jack, who has been following his footprints. Wendy and Danny escape in Hallorann's snowcat; Jack freezes to death in the hedge maze.
