The Others (Alejandro Amenabar, 2001): USA / Spain / France / Italy
Reviewed by Byron Potau. Viewed on DVD.
In 2001, Nicole Kidman finally received her first Oscar nomination for best actress, only the Academy got it wrong like they often do and nominated her for the wrong film. Her nod should have been for The Others, a creepy, stylish ghost story that has slipped into the background of horror films, but should be considered a modern day classic of the genre.
Grace (Nicole Kidman) lives with her two young children, Nicholas (James Bentley) and Anne (Alakina Mann), in a large, isolated mansion. The servants have run off and her husband has not returned from the war and is presumed to be dead. Three servants, Mrs. Mills (Fionnula Flanagan), the deaf mute Lydia (Elaine Cassidy), and Mr. Tuttle (Eric Sykes) come to the house looking for work. Grace thinks they have come in response to her advertisement and they go along with the notion in order to get hired. Grace has very strict rules the servants must follow due to the children’s rare condition which makes them averse to sunlight to the point where it could kill them if exposed. Curtains are always drawn with the only light coming from dim candles and lamps which do not threaten the children’s condition. Odd noises are heard, doors are opened and closed by themselves, and Anne claims to have spoken to a young boy named Victor. From here it is a guessing game as to what is there, who is a part of it, and what is or isn’t really happening.
The film has some likeness to Henry James’s classic novella, “The Turn of the Screw,” but writer/director Alejandro Amenabar takes his story far beyond that with twists and turns, suspense, and moments of fright that are classically scary and keep the viewer anticipating.
There are several fascinating qualities to the film including the children’s unique condition that keeps them out of the light, the expressiveness of the lamplights in the dark, and the ghost like paleness of the children (before excessively pale children began showing up in every other horror film). Indeed, light and the absence of it is an important motif in the film. So much of the film seems shrouded in secrecy. Much of the dialogue is spoken just above a whisper; the house is drenched in fog, cold and grey, cutting them off from everything else. Amenabar achieves a mystical quality and creates a combination of a fairy tale and ghost story. The cinematography, art and set decoration, sound, costumes, and visual effects are all brilliant, contributing to the film’s atmosphere and overall effect.
As mentioned before, Kidman is exceptional as the hyper tense mother, Grace, but Alakina Mann and James Bentley are equally impressive as her children, Anne and Nicholas, and it is them that we find ourselves most interested in as they not only often battle their own fears, but their mother’s neurotic behavior as well.
There have been few truly scary horror films that have not resorted to gore, violence, and exploitation. The Others shows that a film can still be made that can frighten without the buckets of blood and cheap gimmicks that inhabit many of today’s horror flicks.
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