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The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.
For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for The Others can be found here.
The Others is loosely based on The Turn of the Screw, a novella written by American writer Henry James in 1898. The premise is very similar, but the story steers in a complete different direction.
Grace explains that light is like water, that it has to be contained or confined before another door is opened. Light may not be like water in the sense that it is not fluid and cannot physically fill up an entire space, but light IS a form of radiation with a specific direction. When it is blocked, a shadow is created. Closing doors is therefore the best way to contain direct (sun)light. However, blocking direct light does not give protection to indirect light. When light hits a surface, it can also being reflected or diffused by that surface, depending on the characteristics of the material. So when sunlight enters a room through one door, the direct beam can be reflected by things like mirrors, smooth walls and furniture. In this way, refracted light beams can end up entering another open door on the other side of the room. Light can make a curve in that way. So the best way to prevent either direct or indirect light is to keep all doors closed at all times after passing through.
They are both afflicted with a severe form of xeroderma pigmentosum, a genetic disorder which interferes with the body's ability to repair damage caused by ultraviolet radiation, as present in sunlight. It can often result in severe sunburns, created after limited exposure to sunlight, which don't heal for weeks. More terribly, it can cause basal cell carcinoma and other types of skin cancers. Even today, xeroderma pigmentosum is incurable, and treatment options are limited. Much like in the film, the best solution is to limit or entirely preclude exposure to the sun.
This may be part of a technique called free association (mediums call it "automatic writing"), where a person says or writes down immediately what comes to mind. In this case, the old woman seems to be in some sort of trance in which she communicates with spiritual entities; she writes down whatever enters her mind, in the hope of conveying some message or drawing that she is receiving from the spirits.
She acts as a medium, allowing the ghosts to 'talk through her'. When the daughter is in her communion dress, and she takes on the form of the old lady (when Grace flips out and attacks her daughter), this is most likely the result of her possessing the old lady, whether intentionally or not.
Toward the end of the movie, we learn that Grace suffocated her two children using a pillow and then shot herself. She obviously doesn't remember doing so, and their lives therefore go on as before. Her motivation isn't specified in the film, although it was obviously an impulsive act. We can, of course, hypothesize. While waiting for her husband to return from war, she was obviously very tense and alone. Add to that the stress of taking care of her children and something inconsequential might very well have tipped her off. Given the fact that the husband comes home later and directly communicates with his wife, we can assume he died and is a spirit. He probably died somewhere abroad during or after the war. Grace may have received word of his death, which could have been the cause of her losing it.
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