Works hard, but worth it in the end

Rating: 8/10 (2 April 2006)

Alejandro Amenabar's film 'The Others' is in some senses a straightforward copy of 'The Sixth Sense' (with a nod to 'The Shining' added in for good measure). We are introduced to characters who bear witness to ghosts but whose own life is strangely disconnected from the world around them: the punchline is that they themselves are among the dead, only they have not yet acknowledged it. The formal structure of this revelation is more satisfying in 'The Others', it's still well signposted but there's a symmetry in the relationship between the ghosts and the living that is shocking and pleasing at the same time. The film also lacks the pompousness of M. Night Shyalaman's film, and works as a genuinely creepy horror movie despite almost the complete absence of special effects. What doesn't quite work is Nicole Kidman's central character, the woman who is dead but doesn't know it: her behaviour when she (and we) believe she is still living is apparently so batty that it's hard to relate to the story; while the eventual role reversal is handled with great skill, the earlier form of the tale (an apparently conventional ghost story) works far less well (for reasons that we eventually understand when the tables are turned). In consequence, I would say this is a genuinely spine-tingling movie with a great ending; but not a great movie overall, one that seems less silly in retrospect than it does when you're actually watching it. Both it and 'The Sixth Sense' demonstrate that this sort of trickery can work if handled with sufficient skill, but neither film completely succeeds in hiding the forcing of the plot needed to make it happen.