THE OTHERS ***1/2
Reviewed 8/10/01
Twenty-nine year old Spanish writer-director Alejandro Amenábar knows where to draw inspiration for his horror film THE OTHERS. The resemblance in setting and tone to the 1961 classic THE INNOCENTS is too remarkable to be mere coincidence. Amenábar however does his impersonation so well that one is willing to construe it as sincerest flattery rather than theft.
In 1945 on the island of Jersey lying in the English Channel, Grace (Nicole Kidman) and her two children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley ) live on an enormous estate. Grace’s husband, Charles, went off to fight the war and has been missing for a year and a half. Grace’s servants mysteriously disappeared a week ago, and three others have just as mysteriously turned up to replace them. Mrs. Mills (Fionnula Flanagan) acts as butler and nanny, the mute Lydia (Elaine Cassidy) works under her doing general housekeeping, and Mr. Tuttle (Eric Sykes) becomes the new gardener. Their duties are made more difficult because Anne and Nicholas are afflicted with a rare ailment making them allergic to bright light. They cannot stand anything stronger than candlelight, and the drapes to any room they enter must be drawn during the day. All doors within a room of them must always be shut to prevent accidental exposure.
Grace is a fervent and strict Christian woman, and she teaches her children accordingly. The precocious Anne questions her more than she would like about the Bible and Christianity, and she does so in ways Grace finds difficult to answer. When Anne tells Grace that a little boy named Victor and his family is running around the house, Grace disbelieves her and punishes her. As strange noises and opened doors and drawn drapes make their appearance in the house, Grace at first blames the new servants. Grace’s certainty that there are no such things as ghosts is shaken as she tries to figure out if it is all just in her imagination or whether her children or the servants are playing games with her.
THE OTHERS keenly succeeds where the other recent haunted house film, THE HAUNTING, utterly failed, and it is because Amenábar understands that there is more to horror than special effects. Amenábar gets under the audience’s skin through the skillful use of the actors and through chilling atmosphere. Kidman gives a passionate and nuanced performance that draws one in despite her character’s unpleasant temperament. Flanagan is perfect as a woman who has a mischievous twinkle in her eye and knows more than she is letting on. The show stealer though is little Alakina Mann, who is vital in driving the movie forward. She is wholly convincing and never mugs for the camera as child actors are wont to do. James Bentley appears to be present just for his iconic face which resembles a Julie Taymor mask. The lighting and set design maintain a consistent eeriness. The camera frames in extremes. It is either too close to the characters to see what might be creeping up on them or it is too far from them leaving them nowhere to hide. Amenábar instills this sense of claustrophobia and agoraphobia masterfully.
As the film winds toward its ending revelation, it also becomes more literal and more lumbering. The finale is yet another one that forces you to reinterpret all that has gone before, and whatever sense of cleverness you are left with, it also feels all too gimmicky and familiar. Amenábar almost, but does not quite pull off a truly great horror film.