Amenabar strikes gold, beautiful but mildly predictable

Rating: 8/10 (22 August 2002)

I have became a big fan of Amenabar since I watched Abre los Ojos and Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky. This movie obviously looks more like a big budget Hollywood film than Abre los Ojos and the visuals are much better.
If it had been a small budget pic, it would probably had the same sort-comings of Abre that Vanilla Sky rectified. The Others greatly improved Amenabar's status as a writer and director in my eyes and I see no room for improvement for this story. But, unfortunately, I had the movie figured out pretty early because one scene was sorta close to one from (now hold your laughs) Beetlejuice. Those who have seen both movies might make the connection... But, all in all, he made another movie I myself would have loved to be in on. Kidman's performance was good, to me it was a 7 and a half, maybe an 8, out of 10. And kudos to Amenabar to keeping to movie to 104 mins., any longer would have been overkill. This one is worth watching, and for Amenabar fans, it's a keeper