Slow, but it kept the movie from seeming contrived

Rating: Null/10 (12 August 2001)

Briefly: comparisons to The Sixth Sense, while warranted, are unnecessary. The Sixth Sense was a mediocre film with an ending that - as worded by the New Yorker - made the audience think they had just seen a better movie than they actually had.
The Others is vastly better, combining elements of atmosphere, sound, mysterious dialogue, &c. Nicole Kidman, by whom I am seldom impressed, was amazing as a woman clearly gone off her rocker. Two talented kids, a cameo by Eccleston, and three servants-gone-Goth later, we are granted an elegant, no-cheap-shots suspense story that literally made the audience I sat among both audibly gasp and outright scream. Not bad for a movie that does so little - The Others, criticized for plodding along at a terribly slow rate, does seem to shuffle its feet at times. But to the movie's credit, the story simply sits back and lets scary things happen here and there, at their own pace. As a result, not a single instant seems contrived: the audience always has time to catch up with the rest of the characters.
Perhaps you'll figure out what's going on before the rest of the audience. If so, good for you, now shut up, enjoy the movie, and stop telling the person next to you what's going to happen next - you might be surprised.