Feb 27, 2002 03:15 AM
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(Updated Feb 27, 2002 03:15 AM)
Grace (Nicole Kidman) wakes from a nightmare in the large mansion where she lives with her two young children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley). It is 1945; Grace’s husband hasn’t yet returned home from the war, and the young housewife is left on her own to run the household.
Three domestic servants appear rather mysteriously out of the fog constantly shrouding the mansion: the grandmotherly nanny, Mrs. Mills (Fionnula Flanagan,); the doddering old gardener, Mr. Tuttle (Eric Sykes); and the mute cook, Lydia (Elaine Cassidy).
Rooms must be kept in constant darkness because the children have a photosensitive allergy. One drop of sunshine and they break out in sores that could eventually lead to death. Another rule: No door must be opened without the previous one being closed.
Grace carries around a large ring of keys, and is obsessed with locking up everything as tightly as a drum.
Finally, life should be maintained at whisper levels. “Silence is something that we prize very highly in the house.”
Silence is also something the movie treats like gold. There are shots of empty rooms, void of all noise and movement, as menacing as any knife-wielding, mask-wearing killer in your typical horror movie. It is drenched in darkness. Sunlight, rather than shadow, is the thing to dread.
The performances, by the way, are the fulcrum of the entire movie. Young Alakina Mann and James Bentley—both give incredibly performances as pale, neurotic prisoners of their own home. The children are adorable, but they’re also vaguely unsettling.
The Others is so superior to creaky ghost stories. This creepy supernatural chiller, from Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar, has no digital demons running amok. The terror of “The Others” lies in the unseen and the unknown. Amenábar has taken a page from M. Night Shyamalan’s blockbuster The Sixth Sense in creating a subdued but unnerving atmosphere, drenched with low-key suspense and foreboding elements of mystery.
The Others is a film masterful in its simplicity, hearkening back to a time when scary movies made you shiver without the need for digital monsters under the bed. It is one of the creepiest movies in recent memory
