Three out of
five stars
Running time: 100 mins
Highly atmospheric, effectively creepy chiller, with a superb performance
from Nicole Kidman.
The Others is only the third film from 29 year-old Spanish director
Alejandro Amenabar, who made Open Your Eyes (recently remade by Tom Cruise as Vanilla Sky and due out soon). It's already become the
second-highest-grossing American film in Spain (after Titanic) and was an
unexpected hit in the States, so there‚s a very good chance it will do
equally well over here.
The film is set at the end of the Second World War. Nicole Kidman plays
Grace, a mother who moves into a large mansion on the isle of Jersey with
her two children, in order to wait for her husband to return from the war.
However, the children suffer from a rare photo-sensitive disease, meaning
that they can never be exposed to sunlight, so Grace hires three servants
(including, bizarrely, Eric Sykes) to look after the house while she attends
to the children. Soon, however, the children begin to hear voices and see strange
figures, and Grace gradually comes to suspect that her house may be haunted.
The Others is an old-fashioned chiller, dispensing with Hollywood-style
special-effects in favour of a genuinely creepy atmosphere, which is
heightened by the claustrophobic set-up and by Amenabar's superb use of
darkness. Indeed, if you were scared of the dark as a child, then this movie
has your name on it.
The acting is excellent - Kidman is perfectly cast as the initially
over-bearing mother (insisting to the servants that the rooms remain locked
at all times and so on) and yet retaining the sympathy of the audience. It's
a superb performance, and one that could just net her an Oscar nomination
come February.
The supporting cast are also excellent, particularly Alakina Mann (superb)
and James Bentley as her children, but also Fionnula Flannagan as Bertha,
the house-keeper.
The film isn't entirely without flaws - a sequence featuring Christopher
Ecclestone is entirely unnecessary for example, and it's a little slow in
places - but on the whole, it's an effectively creepy chiller that will keep
you guessing to the end. Worth watching.