a thriller worth watching

Rating: Null/10 (28 May 2002)

Since the teen horror flick genre was revived in the mid 90s by the success of Scream and its many imitators, Hollywood has in turn again found a market for the sophisticated horror thriller. The Others fits into the sophisticated horror thriller category that brought instant success to The Sixth Sense writer and director M. Night Shyamalan.
Nicole Kidman stars as Grace Stewart, a lady of leisure in a big estate house in Jersey, England, who has two children suffering a disease which makes them ultra sensitive to sunlight. Her husband has gone off to fight the war and her domestic staff has deserted her. The children live under strict supervision and must not be touched by sunlight, otherwise they will die. When new domestic staff arrives, the threesome find strange things occurring in their house and their day to day regime is threatened. The story unfolds slowly but with enough tension to keep you wondering about the varying motives of Grace Stewart and the domestic staff. The late great director Alfred Hitchcock would have been delighted with the dark set pieces and the visual nuances, including the swirling fog that constantly enshrouds the country house. However, it is also highly likely the master film maker would have tied up a few of the loose ends that do take a little bit away from The Others. Kidman is great as the seemingly neurotic mother, while Alakina Mann and James Bentley, who play Anne and Nicholas Stewart, make good feature film debuts as the scared young children. Bentley in particular looks authentically frightened during the entire film. Outstanding British actor Eric Sykes, who plays the gardener, gives an excellently understated performance as the working partner to nanny Bertha Mills (played by Fionnula Flannigan). The Others has been compared, sometimes unfavourably, to The Sixth Sense, and in many ways it is very similar as the story unwinds and the characters come to terms with their fate. Maybe it's not as good as The Sixth Sense, as predictability and a number of indifferent scenes remove some of the drama, but this does not take away from the wonderfully eerie aspect created by the old British tradition of a haunted country house. Definitely one to watch on a cold, dark night.