(USA / SPA - 2001)
Directed by Alejandro Amenábar, starring Nicole Kidman (Grace Stewart), Fionnula Flanagan (Mrs Bertha Mills), Christopher Eccleston (Charles Stewart), Alakina Mann (Anne Stewart) and James Bentley (Nicholas Stewart), The Others won prizes such as the 2002 Saturn Award of Best Actress (Nicole Kidman), Best Horror Film and Best Supporting Actress (Fionnula Flanagan) and was nominated to the 2002 Golden Globe of Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture (genre: Drama).
Some people are into that kind of horror film which is filled with blood and extreme violence; even though I'm not a huge fan of horror films, I prefer the more psychologic ones - no corpses, no cut bodyparts, just the suggestion of what should be hiding under your bed, behind the curtains, in the darkness... It may explain why I liked this film so much.
The situation is not unknown by the great audience - a woman (Grace) and her kids (Nicholas and Anne) live in an isolated and huge house, the husband (Charles) left to fight on the World War II - but there's something else about it: the children are photosensitive and may suffer of strong alergic crisis if they see sunlight. No door should be open until the next door is closed, in order to prevent the light of getting in, there are curtains in every room, which must be closed when the kids walk in, and that provides a very gloomy atmosphere to the film.
The story begins when Grace's old servants suddenly leave the house and she needs to find other people to take care of it. Soon, Mrs Mills, Mr Tuttle and Lydia show up looking for the work and we are introduced to Anne's and Nicholas' disease. At this point we are also able to notice that Grace is not very comfortable with this new situation and doesn't trust her new servants very much - for example, whenever a door is left opened, she instantly blames them. Her daughter says there's a boy called Victor in the house, and that she can also see his mother, his father and a weird old lady. Sometimes we can't know whether she's just teasing her young brother or whether there are really *other* people in the house, but of course the second option prevails. Grace, a devout catholic, explains to her that "dead and living will only meet up in the Final Judgement" and tries to forget it.
But soon she'll find out it wasn't just her daughter's imagination, or the servants either. Grace starts to hear voices and noises all over the house and strange events, like the disappearence of all the curtains, prove her the 'intruders' are trying to harm her son and her daughter.
I won't spoil the story with any further details; if you're already used to the genre, you'll probably detect the plot twist very quickly. I already knew it when I watched the film (spoilers are my obsession, I love trying to deduce what happened to produce this or that ending), and that made some apparently subtle sentences sound very clear to me. If that's not your case, if you prefer to enjoy the surprise, just watch it and you'll know what I mean. ;) With The Others, Amenábar shows us that it isn't necessary to spend lots of money on special effects to make a good horror film - the spooky stands mainly in our imagination, in the things we cannot see.
