The others

Year of release : 2001

Run time : 1h44m

Genre : Psychological Gothic Horror / Mystery

Cast : Nicole Kidman

The movie was written, directed and scored by Spanish film director,screenwriter and composer Alejandro Amenabar.

The year is 1945, in Jersey, the Channel Islands. Grace Stewart wakes up in the morning screaming, like after a nightmare.

Bertha Mills, Edmund Tuttle and Lydia, who’s mute, arrive to the manor that Grace managed to keep away from the nazis.

Seeing them, Grace thinks they saw her ad in the newspaper, seeking a housekeeper, maid and a gardener (since the ones she had just disappeared the week before), so they don’t contradict her, and she hires them.

She tells them her children, Anne and Nicholas, are photosensitive, and exposure to light brighter than the candle light could burn them, so they have to keep the curtains drawn in the rooms they pass through, and to be safe, they have to lock the doors, so the kids wouldn’t step by accident in rooms full of light.

Grace tells them her husband didn’t return from war since it ended, and she introduces them to her children whom she teaches, making them study the Bible (scaring them with going to children’s limbo in hell if they lie).

While serving them breakfast in the morning, Bertha Mills hears from Anne that one day their mother went mad, but Nicholas tells her to shut up.

The kids are afraid of the dark as they say there’s ghosts.

After talking to Ms. Mills who changes the subject when asked about Lydia’s condition, Grace hears a child screaming, and she thinks it’s Nicholas, running to him, but he says he was reading. She then runs to Anne, who says it wasn’t her, but Victor, the boy who’s been living in their house.

At night, Anne wakes Nicholas up to show him Victor opened the curtains, but Nicholas is afraid to look, and thinks she is pretending to talk to someone.

Grace hears him scream, and comes to the rescue, thinking Anne scared Nicholas, and punishes her to read from the Bible at the bottom of the stairs, for 3 days, since she refused to ask the Virgin for forgiveness, since she says she has nothing to be forgiven for.

Grace keeps on hearing noises around the house, and she thinks it’s the kids and then the servants, as she has migraines and likes the quiet.

As Ms. Mills goes outside to talk to Lydia, Grace sees them speak and hears the noises upstairs.

Going upstairs, she talks to Anne, who’s reading at the top of the stairs, who tells her there’s people redecorating the house.

Grace goes to look, scared, but she doesn’t see anyone, although the doors of the house keep on opening and closing, and she can hear voices but she doesn’t understand what they say.

Anne draws the pictures of the people she saw, and tells her how many times she’s seen them.

Grace is asking the servants to open the curtains so they can see whoever is in the house, but they don’t find anyone.

At night, Grace hears music from the piano room, and going to check she doesn’t see anyone, but sees the piano has been used. She closes it and the door, and checking the door, the door is being slammed in her face, knocking her down. She screams for Ms. Mills, and she comes with the keys to the piano room. When they enter, the piano is opened again, and Grace thinks that something, not human, diabolic, which is not at rest, resides in the house.

Ms. Mills thinks that sometimes the world of the living intertwines with the world of the dead.

I used to love this movie, it’s the first movie I bought the video of without watching it first, because it wasn’t released in Romanian theatres, and it wasn’t for rent either, and luckily, I loved it when I watched it.

Now, probably because I watched it so many times, I got used to it so I wasn’t so amazed.

I liked how the movie was filmed, especially when the curtains are pulled to check the house, it looks as if it’s 3D.

I loved the twist at the end.

I liked the house, the furniture, it was so beautiful!

The acting was good, Nicole Kidman was great, she deserved an Oscar for this role.

The soundtrack was good, eerie.

The visual effects were good.

The movie received critical acclaim (with a score of 85% from the critics and one of 77 % from the audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 78 score from the critics and an 8 from the audience on Metacritic), and grossed 210 million dollars at the box office, against a budget of 17 million dollars, being a box office success.

The Others received many award nominations, including 16 Goya Awards (the Spanish Oscars) nominations, winning 8, among which Best Movie, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay; 6 Saturn Award nominations, 6 Satellite Awards nominations, 2 BAFTA nominations, one Golden Globe nomination for Nicole Kidman, and more.

Cinema Score audiences graded the movie a B.

The movie has a remake in the works.

Rating : Worth a watch !