"The Others," a tantalizing spine-tingler starring Nicole Kidman, indulges in all sorts of cobwebbed conventions – corridors that creak, shutters that bang and things that go bump – but don't be fooled into thinking you're safe from the machinations of the gifted Spanish filmmaker Alejandro Amenabar.
Like "The Sixth Sense," Amenabar's haunting melodrama comes with a twist that would make Linda Blair's head spin. At the same time, his tone and technique have more in common with Gothic fare like Alfred Hitchcock's "Rebecca," andhis story echoes Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw."
Nicole Kidman stars in "The Others."
(Miramax Films)
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The tension mounts gradually. There are not spectral effects, so viewers must face their fear of the unknown, use their imagination. Amenabar works on the assumption that there is nothing scarier than what you see out of the corner of your eye, and he is aided enormously by Javier Aguirresarobe, the man behind the stalking camera.
And then there is Kidman's elegant and edgy portrait of Grace, a high-strung, devoutly religious young woman battling depression, guilt and a host of other woes at the end of World War II. Grace, along with her two children (James Bentley and Alakina Mann), is holed up in a moldering Victorian mansion on the fogbound isle of Jersey. Despite the gloomy weather, the heavy curtains are precautionary because the kids are deathly allergic to sunlight. At least that's what Grace says.
Looking through the mists, a stranger might mistake the building itself for an apparition surrounded by skeletal trees. Then again the servants who suddenly appear at Grace's door are not outsiders at all and clearly feel very comfortable.
The matronly housekeeper (Fionnula Flanagan) and her two companions (Eric Sykes and Elaine Cassidy) claim to have spent the happiest years of their lives on the estate way back when.
If Grace were capable of joy, she might regard the trio's arrival as a happy coincidence. After all, they are looking for work and the house's regular servants have run away without even stopping to collect their wages. Though Grace's odd story and detached manner would seemingly scare off even the most desperate job-seekers, these three are another matter. They clearly have an agenda that has nothing to do with polishing the silver or trimming the hedges.
Still, they aren't the only ominous presences. According to the kids, the house is haunted by a little boy and his father, a concert pianist. Grace attributes the story to her children's morbid imagination, which she has seeded with biblical tales of hellfire and damnation. Well, she may not believe in ghosts, but they set out to change her mind. And soon she, too, begins to sense that there are intruders at large.
Amenabar, who makes his American film debut with "The Others," loves to fool with reality, as he did in his mind-boggling last outing, "Open Your Eyes." "The Others," however, is a more sophisticated and coherently written film that works whether perceived as a ghost story, a psychodrama or an existential debate.
The Others (112 minutes, at area theaters) is rated PG-13 for intensity and suggested violence.
