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USA/Spain/France/Italy 2001
Directed by
Alejandro Amenabar
101 minutes
Rated M

Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
3 stars

The Others

This stylish-looking thriller/horror written and scored by Spanish director, Alejandro Amenábar is big on atmosphere but that in a way is its problem as unlike his impressive 1998 film, Open Your Eyes, it tends to rely much more on atmosphere than dramatic intensity for its efficacy.

As the chatelaine of a cold-water, once stately pile, Nicole Kidman is quite good but as she has no opposite number, living alone with her two rather toffy children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley) and some domestics, she can do little but alternate between maternal whispering and bug-eyed screaming (when her husband, a wan invalid played by Christopher Eccleston, turns up it makes no difference). Then there is the nagging question of why she stays in a haunted house.

Javier Aguirresarobe’s cinematography is wonderful and the sound design equally effective and if you persist, there is one of those clever twists at the film’s end that pulls everything together. Somewhat surprisingly to me the film was a box office success although perhaps this owes more to Kidman’s commercial standing at the time (her hubby, Tom Cruise, was producer on this and she was touted as an Oscar nominee but they had officially divorced by the time the film was released and the nomination never eventuated although she was nominatedm that year for Moulin Rouge).

FYI: Canny old timers will perhaps recognise veteran English comic Eric Sykes as Mr Tuttle, the gardener.

 

 

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