"The others said they wouldn't. But they did."

Rating: 9/10 (15 June 2002)

Imagine: Someone makes a scary thriller...and it actually has a BRAIN! Well, maybe I'm exaggerating, because some other thrillers do. Take "The Sixth Sense" or "Vanilla Sky" for instance. They had plots, and made you think. But take, say, "House on Haunted Hill" (the remake)? Blood. Sex. Gore. Bad special effects. Scares? A real plot? Any reason for making the movie whatsoever besides cheap thrills and money? I think not. "The Others" isn't gross at all. The character development is good, and the musical score and sound is outstanding. And Nicole Kidman gives one of her best performances to date.
Kidman is Grace, a prim, religious 1940's mother with two photosensitive children, Anne and Nicholas. Every day, instead of school, the children study the Bible by candlelight. (By the way, the setting for the story is great, too. Almost the entire film is shot inside the beautiful but very dark house.) At the beginning, three mysterious servants come to work at the house--even though the advertisement Grace meant to send out never got mailed. This is because, they say, the servants worked in the house before.
Soon, Anne begins mentioning Victor, a boy that assumingly keeps talking to her. While at first it looks like a good plan to scare Nicholas, eventually Grace hears noises in the abandoned room upstairs. The old forbidden piano starts playing after the children and servants are asleep, and even though a door isn't supposed to be opened without the previous one being closed first, Grace keeps seeing the door behind her in the corner of her eye open.

This might not sound interesting or scary, but you have to see it. The setup for each sudden, frightening moment is about three-quarters of what really scares you, and that's true for most other movies, too. I probably shouldn't go on with the plot, because this is one of the only movies where just one little spoiler ruins the entire movie.
"The Others" is also probably the only movie that scares you out of your wits every time, not just the first time, and at the same time doesn't give you nightmares for weeks. Probably because none of the scary images are really enough to stick in your head.
The children, Alakina Mann and James Bentley, are excellent young actors, especially James Bentley. He deserves the Young Artist Award he received for this picture, no question about it, and Alakina Mann deserves her nomination.
I hate to break it to you fans of gory thrillers, but blood and guts just aren't scary. Sure, they're gross, but they're more hokey than frightening, and it looks as if the filmmakers haven't got anything better to lengthen the movie with, like actual content. Movies like "The Others" really deserve praise for using things important to the plot, or at least explaining them at the end. I recommend this to anyone who's in the mood for a good scare without the gore.