ervous Grace (Kidman) awakes with a scream in the large house where she lives with her two children on the isolated British isle of Jersey. It's 1945, and she and her young daughter, Anne (Mann), and pale son, Nicolas (Bentley), are awaiting the return of Grace's husband, Charles, from World War II.
Three servants show up, apparently in response to Grace's advertisement: the nanny, Mrs. Mills (Flanagan); gardener, Mr. Tuttle (Eric Sykes); and the mute housekeeper, Lydia (Elaine Cassidy). It seems the previous servants simply vanished one day, leaving Grace to care for the empty old house on her own.
Grace is concerned about finding honest, good workers, because her peculiar household has some strict requirements. All doors must be kept locked at all times, and the curtains must be drawn whenever the children are present. They have a rare condition, a lethal allergy to light, and may not be exposed to anything brighter than candlelight.
Grace is also subject to migraines, and the house must therefore be kept as quiet as possible: no radio, no telephone, nothing that makes a racket, she tells the servants. They comply dutifully.
During the day, Grace forces her children to study religious texts, punishing them with separation if they stray from their lessons. She warns them not to lie, lest they end up burning in "children's limbo."
At night, left to their own devices, Anne teases her sensitive brother with stories of a mysterious, invisible boy who lives in the house. When Grace begins hearing noises, Anne tells her that she's seen others dwelling in the house: a man, his wife and a sightless old woman. Grace angrily chastises Anne for telling lies—until she has a few more inexplicable encounters herself.
Against the advice of Mrs. Mills, Grace decides she must set off on foot to the village, to find a priest to bless the house. But a shock awaits her in the fog, in the woods ...
A spooky story with character
The Others, from young Spanish director Amenábar, is something unexpected at midsummer: a darkly psychological suspense thriller masquerading as a ghost story. In style and substance, it recalls similarly themed movies, from 1963's The Haunting (based on a novel by Shirley Jackson) to 1995's Haunted (from a novel by James Herbert).
Like them, The Others is set in an isolated country house and relies on atmosphere, moody lighting and pregnant silences to heighten the sense of foreboding and unease. And unlike other recent haunted-house films—like 1999's The House on Haunted Hill—it mercifully eschews gratuitous gore, cheap scares and over-the-top effects in favor of character and the unexpected. Up until the end, the viewer is even uncertain if Grace's visitations are genuine or the product of a decompensating mind.
The Others also delivers the scares. Amenábar's original story starts off creepy and stays that way. The lurking, black-clad servants are creepy. The pale-faced, hyperarticulate children are creepy. And repressed, jittery Grace is creepiest of all. All of which serve Amenábar's intention of building a supernatural story as a metaphor for the ultimate dysfunctional family, with twists that keep the viewer on the edge of his seat right to the end.
The actors—particularly Kidman, Flanagan and the gifted children—are all excellent. And Amenábar's use of deep shadow, fog and shimmering candlelight give the film's images a painterly quality.
If the film has flaws, they have to do with pacing. For much of the first act of the movie, little happens as Amenábar weaves the complex web of pain and love that binds Grace to her children, and them to each other. Soon enough, though, the bumps disturb the night, and the sound of unseen intruders sets Grace's lip to quivering, and the tension builds almost unbearably to the surprise ending.
