• Rating:
• Genre: Horror
• Movie Type: Supernatural Horror, Period Film
• Themes: Servants and Employers, Ghost Stories
• Director: Alejandro Amenábar
• Main Cast: Nicole Kidman, Christopher Eccleston, Fionnula Flanagan, Elaine Cassidy, Alakina Mann, Eric Sykes
• Release Year: 2001
• Country: US/ES
• Run Time: 105 minutes
• MPAA Rating: PG13

Plot

Spanish filmmaker Alejandro Amenabar's first English-language production is a creepy period ghost story that continues in the vein of his earlier art house hit Open Your Eyes (1997). Nicole Kidman stars as Grace, a devoutly religious mother of two ailing children who has moved with her family to a mansion on the English coast while awaiting her husband's return from World War II, though he has been declared missing. Their children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley), both suffer from a rare photosensitivity disease that renders them extremely vulnerable to sunlight, prompting Grace's rule of having only one door open in the house at a time. When Anne begins claiming to see ghosts, Grace at first believes her newly arrived family of eccentric servants to be responsible, but chilling events and visions soon lead her to believe that something supernatural is indeed going on. The Others was released only a few months prior to Vanilla Sky (2001), the American remake of Alejandro's Open Your Eyes (1997), ironically starring Kidman's then-estranged husband Tom Cruise. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Review

Alejandro Amenabar's taut, highly effective thriller is such a refreshment simply because it delights in creating an old-fashioned set of rules for the viewer to go along with, and it results in a picture as noteworthy as The Sixth Sense in toying with viewer expectation and providing non-gratuitous scares that are genuinely earned. A rare movie that honestly deserves comparison with Alfred Hitchcock's sterling oeuvre, the film is helped out considerably by its focused, excellent performances, especially embodied in Nicole Kidman's magnificent turn as an icy, high-strung mother caught up in a maelstrom of frayed nerves. Kidman often seems miscast in certain movies, but here she marvelously conveys the character's nervous curiosity and provides a sturdy audience surrogate so that the film never seems too out of reach. The performances by the young cast are also superb, and Fionnula Flanagan registers strongly as the house's nanny. Surprising, narratively sound and armed with believable suspense, The Others proves that the haunted house genre need not be overwrought CGI and dated spooks in order to work. This is Amenabar's first English-language effort, which was co-produced by Kidman's ex Tom Cruise; his feature Open Your Eyes was remade as Vanilla Sky by writer/director Cameron Crowe, starring, of all people, Cruise. ~ Jason Clark, All Movie Guide

Cast

• Nicole Kidman - Grace
• Christopher Eccleston - Charles
• Fionnula Flanagan - Mrs. Mills
• Elaine Cassidy - Lydia
• Eric Sykes - Mr. Tuttle
• Alakina Mann - Anne

James Bentley - Nicholas; Renée Ashershon - Old Lady; Gordon Reid - Assistant; Keith Allen - Mr. Marlish; Michelle Fairley - Mrs. Marlish; Alexander Vince - Victor; Rico Lopez - 2nd Assistant; Aldo Grilo - Gardener

Credit

Javier Aguirresarobe - Cinematographer; Tom Cruise - Executive Producer; Benjamin Fernandez - Art Director; Benjamin Fernandez - Production Designer; Benjamin Fernandez - Set Designer; Bob Weinstein - Executive Producer; Harvey Weinstein - Executive Producer; Alejandro Amenábar - Director; Alejandro Amenábar - Composer (Music Score); Alejandro Amenábar - Screenwriter; Javier Chinchilla - Casting; José Luis Cuerda - Producer; Paula Wagner - Executive Producer; Fernando Bovaira - Producer

Similar Movies

The Changeling; Don't Look Now; Ghost Story; The Haunting; Lady in White; Poltergeist; Rebecca; The Shining; The Turn of the Screw; The Turn of the Screw; The Turn of the Screw; The Uninvited; The Haunting of M; The Innocents; Haunted; The Sixth Sense; The Turn of the Screw; Presence Of Mind; The Devil's Backbone; 13 Gantry Row; Spider; The Village; In a Dark Place

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