Susan Granger’s review of “THE OTHERS” (Dimension Films/Miramax)
“No door is to be opened before the previous one is closed and locked,” instructs Grace (Nicole Kidman), as mistress of a mysterious mansion on the remote British island of Jersey. It’s 1945 and she’s waiting for her husband (Christopher Eccleston) to return from fighting the Germans in France in W.W.II. But the war is over and she hasn’t heard from him. Plus the servants have left, departing in the middle of the night, only to be replaced by three strangers who appear on her doorstep looking for work. But it seems Mrs. Mills (Fionnula Flanagan), Mr. Tuttle (Eric Sykes) and the mute Lydia (Elaine Cassidy) worked in the mansion, years ago, for previous owners. “My children are allergic to light,” Grace continues. “The curtains and shutters must always be drawn.” Without electricity, they exist in almost total darkness and within this macabre, claustrophobic atmosphere, bizarre things start to happen. There are strange sounds and ghoulish apparitions, indicating intruders, which terrify Grace and her children (Alakina Mann, James Bentley) but, oddly, not the servants. “Sooner or later, they will find you,” Mrs. Mills murmurs. “I don’t like fantasies,” the stressed-out Grace snaps, relying, instead, on her devout Catholicism. By Spanish writer/director/composer Alejandro Amenabar (“Open Your Eyes”), this is a sinister, old-fashioned ghost story in which nothing is as it seems. Suspense is created, not by special effects, but by the rising tension and all-encompassing fog. Resembling a young Grace Kelly, Nicole Kidman captures Kelly’s combination of icy volatility and vulnerability which made her irresistible to Alfred Hitchcock. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Others” is a shivery, spooky, scary 8, a suspenseful, brain-twisting chiller-thriller, reminiscent of “The Sixth Sense.”
