Rating: 
Summary: It's pretty good.
Review: Packs a punch. Uses suspense rather than effects and gore. Briliant, but nowhere near as good as the far superior The Innocents. But I'd still recommend it. One of the scariest flicks I've seen in a long while. Watch alone in the dark.
Rating: 
Summary: Atmospheric and Evocative - One of my Favourites
Review: On the mist-shrouded, half-abandoned island of Jersey, in an old but beautiful house, waits Grace and her two children for the husband that went off to war and never came home. For a woman living alone in the those days with two children to care for and a missing husband, the stress and fear would have been terrible. But for Grace, the situation is even more dire - her children Anne and Nicolas are photosensitive, and will die if exposed to any light much brighter than a lamp. Therefore the light must be contained - each door must be shut and locked before the next one is opened, and the curtains in each room are constantly drawn whenever the children move about. Usually they are confined to one room, and the restrictive claustrophobia is almost suffocating, for both them and Grace. But to make things even worse, the servents of the house have disappeared inexplictedly in the night, without even collecting their wages a few ago, leaving Grace literally stranded.Why they left is unknown, but the viewer gets the sneaking suspicion that it was Grace herself, with her rules and regulations that border on obsessive complusion, and her devout Catholic upbringing. However, this problem is soon cleared up with the appearence of three new servents that come to the house - Bertha Mills, Edmund Tuttle and a young mute girl named Lydia. It soon becomes clear however, that there is more to these three that mets the eye - Grace's letter requesting new servents never reached the post office - so what are they doing there? Mystery follows mystery as strange happenings begin to arise in the house. Grace's daughter Anne speaks of a young boy named Victor, much to the terror of the younger Nicolas, and though the footsteps and opened doors are first blamed on the servents and the children, soon Grace cannot deny that there are others in the house with them. Nicole Kidman puts on an exquistite performance as the ridgid and strict Grace, gradually becoming unwound by the impossible occurances happening around her. Though many may dislike her strict and often harsh nature toward the children, the director compensates with several softer moments, and it is very clear throughout the plot that she desparately loves both of them. Her entire personality is ruled by circumstance. It is clear that like the servents, she too harbours a secret, as her children keep mysteriously alluding to "that day" when supposedly their mother went mad, and who wouldn't under such dreadful and stressful circumstances. The director has struck gold with the casting of Anne and Nicolas. Rather than simply being the children, whose only role is to look scared, they are fundamental to the story and to Grace's state of mind. The eldest, Anne is a real joy - rebelling against her mother continually, first in her outright disbelief in what her Biblical mother preaches to her, and secondly in her stalwart insistence that she is *not* telling her brother scary stories, but there is in fact someone else in the house - warning her that they're threatening to take down the curtains... Mischievous and often malicious, she is closer to "the others" than anyone else in the house, much to the upsetting of little Nicolas. Devoted to his mother, yet needful of the presence of his sister, he is shy to his sister's confidence, and fearful to her bravery in regard to the ghosts. "The Others" was written and directed by Alejandro Amenabar, and he brilliantly brings the spooky atmosphere to life, showing us both the grandeur of the house and the suffocatingly restrictive way of living inside it. In many ways the house itself is a major character, and when it comes to the frightening moments...lets just say I have never been so terrified of the mere sound of footsteps on the second floor. The ending is quite ambiguous, and as the credits role, you're not entirely sure if its a happy ending or not. Instead it is melancoly and hazy, which given the overall atmosphere of the movie is a perfect ending, but left me with more questions than answers. The two main questions raised are what the characters themselves ask. To not give away the story, I can't tell you who is speaking them, but they are "Why do you remain in this house?" and "What does all this mean?" It presents a new, and not entirely welcome slant on the nature of death, and it would seem by the end that the ghosts are trapped in the house via the fog for all time. Although I adore this movie, and don't mind at all its slow but constant pace, I have to admit that it's not for everyone. My father watched it with me, and though he admitted that it was very clever, he found the only frighting thing about it was the sight of a mentally fragile woman running about the house with a shotgun! If you are a gore and blood person, this movie won't impress you, though if you're imagination is like mine, and you find that what you *don't* see is more terrifying than what you *do*, here is the movie for you.
Rating: 
Summary: I must be the only person who DIDN'T like this.
Review: As the title of my review says, it seems like I am the only person on Earth who did not like The Others. It's probably just my taste, but this movie was extremely slow moving and was not frightening at all. I watched it in the theater when it came out and I was bored the whole time. Almost nothing about it caught my attention and before it was halfway over I remember I had to use all of the energy I had just to keep myself awake. The only scary moments seem to be when there are sudden noises or similar things - and there are few of them and they aren't terribly scary in the first place. The characterization and atmosphere created in the film are good, however, and the plot is well-thought out. The actors do a good job, but the storyline is just not something that I could get interested in, and the movie is way too slow-moving to be something I would ever want to watch again.
Rating:
Summary: The Sixth Sense was the rip off!!!
Review: This is not a review but a note for all those mistaken people who believe that this is nothing but a mere ''rip off'' of "The Sixth Sense." Even though "The Sixth Sense" was released in the summer of 1999, the argument of "The Others" was penned a year earlier than that of "The Sixth Sense." So, eat you heart out, Mr. Shyamalan!!
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding atmosphere surrounds intriguing well-acted film
Review: Nicole Kidman plays a barely-holding-together mother of two children afflicted with hypersensitivity to light. The result is a family that lives a dark, dreary, yet highly-strung existence. The father went away to WWII, and did not return when it ended. One senses throughout that each character is waiting for something to happen--something to break the horrid state they find themselves in. Into the picture come three domestic servants, responding to an advertisement to replace the three that left suddenly. These new helpers are quiet, and mysterious. They seem to know much, but are careful to let fate take its course. The mother soon discovers that her new domestic servants had not responded to a published help wanted notice, because the postman never picked up the request. Kidman plays her deeply conflicted character with a combination of force and poise that is amazing. The children also do earily well--as do the servants. Even the father, who plays an important, but small role, falls into place with sublety. Bottom line: The Others compares favorably with such movies as Sixth Sense and Vanilla Sky. The brilliantly created atmosphere, along with the movie's ability to help me overcome my hatred of darkly lit movies earns this creation five stars!
Rating:
Summary: SUSPENSEFUL!
Review: The first time I saw the others, I watched it in surround sound in the dark. It was suspenseful but, not scary. Plus it has creepy eerie music in the back round for pretty much the whole film.
Rating:
Summary: A spendid addition to the ghost film canon
Review: What is going on with Spansish cinema. They seem to be producing the cream of films at the moment. Director Amenábar had shown some style with Open you eyes. However, with the backing of the Hollywood machine, he has gome step further and produced a ghost film of pure gold. The suspense builds slowly and the tremendous performance of Nicole Kidman delivers a film of exceptional power. See if you can guess the truth of the others.
Rating:
Summary: Who are the Others?
Review: The movie has really scary moments, achieved in good taste without excessive gore and violence. I did not see it in the theaters, but watching in on a big screen tv is scary enough. All this is true, even given the fact that I knew what was really going on, because I inadvertently overheard the plot of this movie on "Mad TV." Nicole Kidman, as usual, does an outstanding job of merging with her character and being totally believable. The British accents are unobtrusive enough to make the characters easy to listen to. The dark atmosphere and the suspense work flawlessly to achieve their desired effect. An upper class, seemingly emotionally stable--even if a bit neurotic--and caring widow, is taking care of two children in a remote mansion, following the end of World War II. The children are intelligent, but subject to a mysterious illness--they break into sores when exposed to normal amounts of light. Apart from this strange ailment, everything looks proper, until domestic help arrives. These servants may seem creepy and suspicious, but they simply create the appropriate atmosphere and delay, for a while, the revelation about the emotional breakdown and murder that are the real ghostly (and ghastly) story of this movie.
Rating:
Summary: Superb Gothic with Kidman's break-out performance
Review: Nicole Kidman got some fine notices when she first appeared in DEAD CALM and FLIRTING, but she pretty much disappeared into dull girlfriend roles during the years of her marriage to Tom Cruise. She did garner critical attention for her funny comic turn in TO DIE FOR, but the part closely approximated the press's conception of her (as scheming arm-candy) and it wasn't until this fine thriller by Alejandro Almenabar came out in 2001 that people began treating her seriously. (Although she was nominated for her first Best Actress Oscar for MOULIN ROUGE--which came out earlier that year--, it wasn't until the fine notices for her work in THE OTHERS that people started taking her role in MR more seriously.) Even without Kidman's splendid turn as the neurotically brittle Grace, the mistress of the mysterious Isle of Jersey mansion where she lives during WWII with her small children, this Gothic chiller would be a real treat. The pace is purposefully slow, and the colors are all watery and muted: the gigantic house surrounded by fog and greenery seems like something out of a Willkie Collins sensation novel. Grace lives in the mansion bereft of her husband (who has left her to go to War) and servants (who recently left Grace and her children on a traumatic day in the recent past we hear referred to again and again in the film ). Her eldest child, the willful Anne (Alakina Mann, in a memorable child's performance), is reporting encounters with a frightened and angry family of ghosts living in the house with them. It is into this that on one day a trio of strangers, led by Mrs. Mills (Fionnula Flannagan) approach Grace in the mansion looking for work... but it seems they know this house already from before... Many who saw this film in 2001 were disappointed in that its ending reminded them too much of another popular ghost film. But this is unfair, especially given that THE OTHERS started filming before the other film had been released. It's a superbly scary Gothic, and offers three superlatives for the three women at its core: FLannagan, Mann, and the amazingly complex Kidman.
Rating:
Summary: Amenabar does it again... and Nicole Kidman too
Review: After his two most brilliant movies ("Thesis" and "Open Your Eyes", which "Vanilla Sky" was based off) Chilean-born Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar comes back with an eye-opener that will keep you at the edge of your seat. In a non-conventional script that reminds us of what a brilliant writer he is, he presents a family of three, a mother (Kidman in another impeccable performance) and her two kids, "trapped" inside a house, where the curtains must remain closed at all times to shut the light out, since the kids suffer from a critical condition that makes them fatally alergic to it. As three new servants knock on their door to offer their services, their lives take a weird twist that not even the savviest moviegoers can expect. The brilliance of Amenabar as writer and director is complemented by the music (also composed by him), which helps to set the tone for the normally dark shots. In the end, the movie opens up (like Amenabar has us used to) a whole can of worms, where life and death are inextricably tied to each other, and viewers are struck with the realization that truly we as humans have not yet learned our lesson as to how to cope with the deaths of our loved ones, much less when they happen under tragic circumstances. A must see, and an instant timeless suspense classic which will continue to be viewed by generations to come.
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