You Just Want Car Chases! And not St Augustine!

Rating: Null/10 (4 January 2003)

In my entire movie-going life (and I go back to the original ONE HUNDRED AND ONE DALMATIANS)I have never found a movie so engrossing, moving,heart-rending, fascinating, overwhelming, cathartic, and a hundred other things along these lines which you always read in movie reviews and until now always seemed so pretentiously overblown to me...
And yet I'd give it only 3 out of 4 stars. I can see how others would find it overlong, repetitious, and structurally ill-conceived in spots.. But it is absurd to say that this is a bad movie, or a Horror film which is not horrifying and so on. It's simply NOT a Horror or Suspense Film or a Ghost Story. It belongs to another genre entirely. Quasi-Augustinian Creepshow.
I haven't seen much mention of Religion in reviews I've read. Odd, as Angela Lansbury would say. With the very first audio a recitation of the very first verses of the Holy Bible? With an extended reference to the not especially well-known martyrs SS Justus and Pastor? (That's the Spanish influence, by the way.) With countless scattered references to Limbo, Hell, the Rosary, priests, Holy Communion, the Virgin, Christ,God, and Noah? And with all that, a main character named GRACE? At the risk of seeming patronizing...
THE OTHERS is basically an ambiguously ironic (or ambiguously confirmatory? But the BOY should then have been SEVEN, not FIVE or SIX) look at Roman Catholic Theology concerning God as Ruler of All generally, and more particularly, the Fates of various categories of Immortal Souls in the Afterlife . If you're not at all interested in that subject you are bound to be constitutionally bored by this movie. If you are utterly captivated by that subject you are bound to be at the least fully engaged by every frame of this magnificently photographed, acted, and scored film. (The screenwriting is not SO magnificent.) If you are a strictly orthodox Catholic you will probably be offended. If you are a strictly orthodox Catholic wannabe for whom "things have just not worked out" this movie will come as something of a painfully gratifying shock.
Yes, I would definitely say that this is one movie reaction to which will depend greatly on predisposition towards thematic content. Unfortunately, interest in that content as regards THE OTHERS is about on the level of interest in the development of Esperanto.
So again, I can sympathize with the "two star" reviews. But it's hard for me to see how anyone could fail to be sufficiently moved by Nicole Kidman's character and performance that they wouldn't find a satisfying emotional pay-off at the end. For me, her performance here is one of the ten best I've ever seen in a movie. That conflicted reaction to a simple offer of a nice hot cup of tea in rather odd circumstances... Amazing. Beautiful. Heart-rending. Cathartic...