A masterpiece... absolutely brilliant!

Rating: 10/10 (1 December 2001)

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** The Others has got to be one of the best films of the year. Infact I would say that it's the best, behind that other Nicole Kidman starrer, Moulin Rouge.
It all starts out well and good. Grace (Nicole Kidman) and her kids are alone in their Jersey mansion. Their servants have disappeared into thin air and Grace's husband is lost at war. Then one day three strangers show up at their door. Mrs. Mills being the leader (Fionulla Flanigan) along with the gardener (Erik Sykes) and a mute girl, Lydia (Elaine Casasidy). Nicole needs the help so she hires them on the spot. She shows them the kids, Anne and Nicholas (Alakina Mann and James Bentley). The two have a rare disease that makes them break out in blisters and sores whenever light hits them. So at
all time everyone must follow the simple rules. No door can be opened until the one you just walked through is locked and make sure all curtains are closed.
Soon enough strange things start to happen. Curtains open in the middle of the nights, crying is heard from someone who doesn't seem to be anywhere in the house, whispering is heard aswell as the piano being played inside the locked room when everyone is in bed. Could the house be haunted? Anne seems to think so. She claims to of seen them. There's Victor, a young boy, aswell as a mother and father and an old woman.
Grace wont have a bar of it but she does start to suspect something but instead of the paranormal... she suspects the servents. And rightly so, they are damned creepy.
Anyway. Along the way Grace's husband returns (played by Chris Eccleson) from war and the kids discover something sinister about the new servants.
The movie is expertly made. Great performances by all involved (Nicole Kidman, Fionulla Flanigan and Alakina Mann being the standouts. I would love to see Nicole get an oscar for this but I liked Moulin Rouge more. A Supporting Actress nod could go the way of Fionulla or Alakina (Remember Anna Paquin got one when she was young!)). Alajandro Amenabar has created a world of haunting beauty. The interior scenes all have a great atmosphere and the rare outside scenes are given a wonderful touch or mystery by the surprisingly eerie use of fog). The directing, writing, cinematography, set design et cetera are all top notch.
The ending is great. I never saw it coming. The subtle clues Alajandro gives us are good enough as to not give away the ending but to make us think whether what's happening is real/fake/imagined or possibly even a big nightmare (the movie starts with Grace waking up from a nightmare, screaming).
Oh and there is some scary stuff going on in this film. We don't get scared anymore by the latest whiz-bang special effects (see Lost Souls, House On Haunted Hill) but Alajandro creates a sense of fear from what he are thinking. Take for example the scene where everyone in the house is asleep and then the downstairs piano in the locked room starts playing. We are unsure what is going on but we are all know something is going to happen and we get scared by that feeling. Special notice must go to the end scare with the kids in the closet... everyone in my cinema (600 people) jumped/screamed/curses/covered their eyes... everyone was caught by surprise.
10/10 A+
-SPOILERS ABOUT THE ENDING FROM NOW-

The movie's ending, which has been called a rip-off of The Sixth Sense, is actually a lot better than that movie's ending. Where in that movie they gave it away with the obvious "I see dead people" line the ending of The Others is given away in a much more subtle way and is thus a lot harder to guess.
I was totally taken by surprise with the ending. And in aftermath only started to piece it all together. "Mother's gone mad... again", Grace's migraine's, the husband coming back from war then leaving again, the curtains etc...
excellent.
A must see.