Gothic atmosphere and a few nice chills...keep your remote handy to turn down the screams...

Rating: Null/10 (21 June 2002)

Nicole Kidman has to be congratulated for giving an excellent performance as a woman living on the Channel Islands in a deserted looking house with two small children who are always seeing ghosts. That's the thrust of the tale and the screenwriters have taken bits and pieces of other such suspenseful tales--"The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James about a governess and two children who communicate with spirits--and tossed in elements of "The Haunting" and "The Uninvited" to come up with a nice little ghost story.
The picture could just as well have been filmed in black and white since it makes almost no use of color. The drapes have to be drawn because the children have an illness that makes them photosensitive to light. Fionnula Flannagan gives an appropriately eerie performance as a housekeeper who knows more than she's willing to tell and the children give expert performances. But it gives away its secret about halfway through (especially if you've been to the movies lately), so the ending comes as no great surprise.
Biggest drawback is the pacing of the film--very slow in spots and bound to make you feel something should happen soon. And the dialogue, especially by Miss Kidman, is below a whisper--someone should have made sure the film got a good dubbing before release--the music often drowns out some key passages in the dialogue, hindered even further by Miss Kidman's attempt at a proper accent.
Best watched with the remote in hand to adjust the volume for the soft spoken passages--and to turn it down for the screams!!