Pretty Pictures & English Accents

Rating: Null/10 (27 August 2001)

I saw this film over the weekend which was prescribed by some close friends who promised a "chilly feeling" that would persist in the back region and the nape of the neck that would last for about 1 to 1 and a half hours.
The Others is set on an island near post WWII England where a neurotic mother played by Nichole Kidman lives alone with her two kids in a huge dark house. She hires three strangers as housekeepers who soon learn that her children are afflicted with a rare disease that causes their skin to boil in the sunlight and thus must keep every door and curtain in the house closed at all times. Things start to get creepy when her daughter starts seeing ghosts and the strangers seem to know a secret about the house.
While I found the film to be original, entertaining, and shot very well, I was also a little disappointed that every once in a while they would throw in these scenes that would basically telegraph to you what was really going on which made the whole "secret" very obvious early on in the film.
Still, I WAS entertained and there were some genuine scary moments in the movie that made several people in the audience scream and jump. The plot is pretty basic although the filmmakers try to pretend that it's not. Catch this one for some genuine scares, but you won't feel like you have to sleep with the nightlight on.
reviewed by Chris "Beyond"