A Highly Suspenseful Thriller

Rating: Null/10 (9 September 2002)

The Others, the first American film by the young Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar (Open Your Eyes), is a low-key, psychological horror story that achieves its creepy results without using in-your-face special effects. The film takes place in an old British mansion (you guessed it) on the fog bound Isle of Jersey in 1945. Grace (Nicole Kidman) is the owner of this spooky house who, as the film begins, hires three new servants to replace those who have mysteriously left without leaving a note or saying goodbye.

Grace's two children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley), have a rare ailment that requires they cannot be exposed to light. Thus, all curtains in the mansion must be drawn and each door in the house shut and locked before a door is opened to another room. The house has no electricity, no radio, TV, or phone, and Grace must look after her children by herself. Grace's husband Charles (Christopher Eccleston) hasn't returned home from the war, and she hasn't received any word as to whether or not he is still alive. Grace is icily distant and rigid and has given her children a strict religious upbringing.
When three servants arrive, the elderly Mrs. Mills (Fionnula Flanagan), the mute, young Lydia (Elaine Cassidy), and an aging gardener, Mr. Tuttle (Eric Sykes), it soon becomes apparent that they have some knowledge that Grace doesn't. Anne begins to hear voices and tells her mother she has conversations with a young boy named Viktor. Grace refuses to believe her daughter until she starts to hear the sounds and voices of intruders in the house herself. "Sooner or later, they will find you," Mrs. Mills murmurs. When the mother discovers photo albums filled with snapshots of dead people, she's ready to start believing Anne.
Practically the entire film takes place in shadows bathed in an ethereal glow, creating an eerie and dreamlike atmosphere. Amenabar uses the darkness to increase the tension and feeling of claustrophobia. Nicole Kidman is effective as the emotionally constricted mother trying to protect her children and maintain her sanity. The Others is a highly suspenseful thriller with a shocking plot twist that will make your heart go bump-bump in the night.