The Others (2001)
Grade: A-
Actors: Nicole Kidman, Fionula Flannigan, Christopher Eccleston
Director: Alejandro Amenabar
Rated PG-13 for scary elements


Distant screaming. Creaky floorboards. A self-playing piano. Shivering. Darkness. What do all of these words/phrases have in common? You think of all of them when you think of a haunted house movie (except for maybe that third one). The genre has become so predictable that it's hard to be scared, or even startled by their obvious trickery. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and for me, The Others presents a BIG exception.

Although it may move at a glacial pace, the film is very involving and slowly building. The pace only adds to The Others' overall tone. With careful plotting, an involving storyline, and truly creepy characters and cinematography, you get a sense of claustrophobia even though our protagonist lives in a vast Victorian manor. Aside from pacing, there is one other difference in The Others, our main character wants to be kept in the darkness.

Grace (Nicole Kidman) is an icy, schoolmarm-ish, God-fearing, Bible-toting, overzealous, smothering, overbearing concotion of a character. She's strict with her children, and forces them to sit down for hours a day learning lessons from the Bible. Grace's husband is away at war and has been gone for years. She fears the worst, but hopes for the best, telling her children that their father will be home soon enough.

The children are likewise, odd creations. They have a strange disease which makes them allergic to sunlight. Any light stronger than that of a candle is harmful and potentially deadly. The daughter is uber-creepy and tries to scare the living bejeesus out of her little brother by spinning tales of a ghostly family also inhabiting the mansion.

The mansion itself is too large for one woman to tend to on her own, so she enlists the help of a maid named Miss Mills (Fionula Flanagan), a gardener, and a mute girl. Grace gives Miss Mills specific-yet-odd rules to follow, such as closing one door before opening the next, so as to keep all of the sunlight out.

I won't be ruining anything by saying that all of these people have some sort of secret. That's basically a no-brainer in a film of this variety. The clever part is what exactly their secret is. With the arrival of her servants, comes the arrival of things that go bump in the night. What are these things that go bump in the night? You'll have to pay ten dollars to see.

Perhaps what I admired most about the film is that it works on various levels. If you're in the mood to be scared, it's a good movie to go see. A fun, spooky, dark mansion full of twists and turns. It's a good night out. But the film also has some deeper context. With so much religious jargon being thrown around by Grace and the kids, you can't help but think that the film has a greater meaning, spiritually speaking. I would go deeper into this topic, but that would mean spoiling the movie for you, my dear (and few) readers. The fact that the film works as a potent drama makes the proceedings even more impressive.

Those first five things that I mentioned in the beginning of the review are all employed here, but with better results than usual. The film uses the queer atmosphere to it's advantage, with the best cinematography I've seen all year because of it's usage of details in the shadows and the apparently painstakingly perfect lighting only enhances the film's mood.

The success of the film rests solely on the more-than-capable shoulders of Nicole Kidman (the only "name" in the picture). Here, she's at her best, and playing pretty much against type, like she did in her other summer offering, Moulin Rouge. When you think of a tightly wound, uptight mother, Nicole Kidman's glamour-puss persona doesn't exactly come to mind. Yet, she succeeds. She understands that the film has levels, and in every scene, she plays to each one. Plus, the camera obviously loves her as it frames her like a modern day Grace Kelly.

The rest of the cast is filled out nicely by character actors. Fionula Flanagan is totally unsettling as the maid, and it's obvious that she knows too much about something. Christopher Eccleston appears briefly as Kidman's husband in the film. Most of his screetime is zombie-like, so he doesn't have a chance to flex his considerable acting muscle.

All in all, go see this movie if you want to have good time, think, or just be scared. You will be entertained on all of those levels. This is a film with certainly very broad appeal, and I ate it up.


-Brian Jones, 2001