A good way to spend an evening. 7/10

Rating: 7/10 (10 August 2001)

SPOILERS
This has potential to be as big a hit as The Sixth Sense on account of its nature - it is clearly trying to copy its success and its formula (not to mention its release date - I think they both opened in the exact same week, two years apart). It is nowhere as good as that film, but, if you did like that, you're going to probably like this. I doubt anyone will like this one better, though.
Technically, the film is superb. In this aspect, it probably surpasses The Sixth Sense. The editing and especially the cinematography are often breathtaking. The acting is decent. I don't particularly care for Nicole Kidman - she harmed Eyes Wide Shut significantly, in my opinion, but her bizarre style of acting worked fabulously in the purposely campy Moulin Rouge. Here, as a constantly paranoid, possessive, and protective mother, she is more than adequate, though not deserving of any award or special hurrah. The three servants are well played by Fionnula Flanagan, Eric Sykes, and Elaine Cassidy - they have a certain air about them. The best performances come from the two children (another echo of The Sixth Sense, although the adults in that one were also marvelous) - James Bentley as the perpetually frightened Nicholas and Alakina Mann as the intelligent Anne. Mann is in fact wonderful and I hope to see her in other films in the future. There are just a few actors after these principals, and I commend the filmmakers very much. This saves a ton of money, and makes the film more intimate and frightening, which is exactly what this film calls for.
Like always, almost all of the film's problems exist in the script. The screenwriter (who is also the director) realizes that his savvy audience will guess that this is a descendent of the immensely popular The Sixth Sense, so he is always attempting to trick us. What are these strange servants up to? A few times, we experience the narrative from their point of view, and what they say drives us wild with guessing. And what is wrong with the father, who had disappeared in WWII (this is set in the 1940s) and then mysteriously reappears in a frightening fog? We know that there are surprises, and these tricks work to confuse us and lead us away - good old McGuffins. I guessed right away, correctly, the father's situation, which kept me from seeing the forest for the trees. What the script forgets to do, or at least forgets to do well, is develop the characters. The children are well developed, but Amenabar relies too much on the inherent creepiness of the three servants for their effect - they almost become silly by the end; anyway, there were several moments when I laughed at their actions, although it might have been intentional. Grace (Nicole Kidman) is Amenabar's biggest failure. Her main character trait is a severe neurosis - her husband has been lost in battle and she has been left alone in an enormous mansion with only her two children. Those children have a severe light sensitivity - they break out in hives when they come into contact with light (no, they aren't Gremlins or magwies). For most of the film, Kidman's character is built up, but the revelations at the end don't ring true. One of the reasons that the ending of The Sixth Sense worked so well was because the final revelations revealed a lot of hidden facets about the characters and their actions in the events which happened beforehand. The revelations here, while very unexpected and clever, don't exactly follow what Amenabar was building.
Amenabar also has a problem with suspense. He gives himself all these little peculiarities to deal with - the kids are allergic to light, for instance. But he never really uses that to create suspense. One morning, the children wake up to find that all the curtains in the house have been stolen. It would have been better, perhaps, if we were allowed to watch the curtains being slowly removed at night. The suspense nearer the beginning, when we don't know very much, is quite good. The first set piece is excellent. A lot of the other scary scenes are also quite good, including the climactic one, where the secrets are finally revealed. Still, the film uses too many stingers (sharp rises in the music). That may make us jump, but for a dishonest reason.