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A good case of goose bumps
[Photo: Dimension Films]
Nicole Kidman brings a just right off-center performance to her role as the ferociously protective mother in The Others.
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By STEVE PERSALL
© St. Petersburg Times,
published August 9, 2001
Old-school subtlety provides the perfect backdrop for this tale of a mother bringing up two children in an English mansion where (shudder) the sun never shines.
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The enormous popularity of The Sixth Sense suggested audiences can still enjoy scary movies that don't depend on cheap shocks to get under your skin. Alejandro Amenabar proves it wasn't a fluke with his equally tidy ghost story The Others.
There aren't any jump-out-and-say-boo moments in The Others, no cats leaping from closets (what are they doing in there, anyway?) or any other shortcuts to shivers. This is old-school movie terror, spirited from a creative age before fake blood and stinging musical chords became over-used props.
Instead, Amenabar cloaks his film with pure dread, much of it manifested in the pale, perplexed face of Nicole Kidman playing Grace, a haunted mother living with her two children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley), in an English mansion where the sun doesn't shine.
Grace's children are hyper-allergic to light, so windows are perpetually curtained and candles provide the only glow. She's ferociously protective of darkness to keep Anne and Nicholas healthy, while teaching them religious lessons with a fervor bordering on mental abuse.
Amenabar's devious screenplay quickly makes everything seem suspect. How to explain that faintly wild glint in Grace's eyes? Are the children truly so photo-sensitive? What happened to previous servants who disappeared, and why do three applicants for the vacated positions seem so unconcerned?
The filmmaker has interesting answers in store, but not quickly. The Others creeps up on viewers like goose bumps, unexpected yet not completely surprising in these macabre circumstances.
Any further information might spoil Amenabar's brittle plot. Better to focus on the methods the filmmaker uses to prevent his eerie mood from shattering.
The candlelight motif allows cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe to tease us with evocative natural lighting. Elementary sound effects -- creaking wood, footsteps, etc. -- are cleverly dealt from all corners of a theater's multichannel stereo system. Basic stuff, but effective, with an ingenuity more foreign to modern sensibilities than they should be. Amenabar also composed the musical score that never sounds hysterical, although it's "speaking" for characters who are.
Kidman's performance is just off-center enough to keep viewers guessing, and the two child actors are fine. The only other substantial role is Fionnula Flanagan's soothing/sinister turn as Mrs. Mills, a new nanny aware of everything and revealing nothing until the proper "aha" moments.
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MOVIE REVIEW
The Others
Grade: B
Director: Alejandro Amenabar
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Fionnula Flanagan, Alakina Mann, James Bentley, Eric Sykes, Christopher Eccleston
Screenplay: Alejandro Amenabar
Rating: PG-13; scary themes, child endangerment
Running time: 104 min.
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